I recently finished reading Mission Economy by Marianna Mazzucato, a great book urging governments to reconsider their role in capitalist societies by moving away from merely de-risking the supposed innovation of the private sector and instead leading economic, societal, and technological change.
The book explores the way the US government looked at itself at the time of the Apollo program when it decided that the whole of the United States, as a country, was on a mission to put a man on the moon. This set in motion a national agenda led by the government that resulted in countless innovations either created within the government itself or funded by the government as a direct response to the Apollo program: from GPS, camera phones, and laptops, to CAT scans, ear thermometers, and baby formula.
The relationship between the government and the private sector at that time had the government as the visionary of the future, with the private sector supporting the realisation of that bold and larger-than-life vision.
Contrast that with today, where it is common to perceive the government as an old, uninspired institution whose sole role is to create an environment for the private sector to come and innovate. In this role, the government must get out of the way and only intervene in the case of a market failure.
Interestingly, the role of the government in society that Mazzucato envisions is quite similar to the role that the government in Oman and other countries in the GCC play. The government here is in charge of health, education, and research; the distinction between private and public sector is not always clear with the government operating for-profit activities in telecom, utilities, and energy; and all GCC countries are attempting to set the national agendas through public future visions.
However, the book also talks about the capabilities that the government needs to possess to be able to deliver their visions, and it turns out that these challenges are universal as they relate to government budget allocation, recruitment of government officials, and procurement of services for the government. For example, one of the key reasons why NASA was able to deliver the Apollo missions was the fact that NASA had a special legal framework for procuring services without being bound by the standard procedures for other government agencies.
Anyone who has worked in any government would tell you that these issues (budget, recruitment, and procurement) are classic obstacles for getting anything done in the government. From the Omani context, it is almost impossible for a government entity to be able to produce anything of value that truly gets us closer to the realisation of Vision 2040 without having a special exemption for budget allocation, recruitment, or procurement. In fact, many national programmes that we see with special branding names, such as Tawazun and the like, operate outside the legal system and have most of their employees as secondees from government-owned companies that are not subject to the civil service code.
In Oman, Sultan Haitham City is a great example of a project led by the government that attempts to redefine the relationship between the government and the private sector. Unlike the Wave and Muscat Hills, Sultan Haitham City is not managed by a company, but by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning itself using its own full-time staff. The vision for this project was dreamt up and is being executed by government employees. However, without knowledge of any of the details of this project, it is obvious that this project is not subject to the Tender Law.
The book also explored how, from a capitalist perspective, things that are offered for free by the government are rarely perceived as valuable, and for this reason, it becomes easy to discount the significant role that public projects play in our daily lives and how that makes it difficult to attract people to come and work for the government.
The book explores the way by which the government can develop its dynamic capabilities to be able to lead the economy through experimentation and learning, rethinking the way by which the government creates and executes its strategies, reconsidering how civil servants are recruited, trained, and developed, and re-examining how the government manages itself.
Marianna Mazzucato is also the author of one of my favourite books of recent years The Big Con, which talks about the damage that governments do to themselves through their over-reliance on big consultants. However, my all time favourite book on innovation within the government remains We the Possibility by Mitchell Weiss.
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