(Prime Minister Delivery Unit) PMDU

Tony Blair's presidential election led to the further institutionalization of the Prime Minister's office in 1997, but the establishment of the British Prime Minister's office gave some formal control over executive policy, and Britain's political system is linked to the legend of Westminster, which combines Leadership, accountability, and limited executive power. The vision of Westminster does not recognize the role of Prime Minister and advisers in legislation, so the prime Minister relies on his personality in making decisions.

After the 2011 elections, the British government restructured parts of the executive branch, and with the establishment of the Prime Minister Delivery unit, whose motto was to ensure that public opinion, is served with high priority outcomes. The unit delivers its reports directly to the Prime Minister to ensure that the Government implements its priorities in terms of education, health, crime and murder.

The agenda of PMDU is formulated by the prime minister and its effect relies on his power. This way, it continues the remaining personalist of the UK or British system. In other words, the part of core executive has been modified with respect to the process of policy implementation. In the initial stages of reformation, it was attempted by British government to distance the policy delivery from executive. It was simply hived off to departments and agencies which were predicted to be accountable for the delivery of policy. No doubt, this area formulated a completely false dichotomy among delivery and policy, and particularly politicians were afraid of being rejected and excluded from salient issues. They were also fearful of their objectives not being achieved in terms of policy. Subsequently, central power was reposed by PMDU and took it further in terms of the implementation of policy. In addition, The PMDU actually has become accountable for making sure that the central agenda of government is implemented. This again has been traditionally Cabinet Office’s responsibility. There is also a growing view that much of policy function has been lost by Cabinet Office.

Performance Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU):

Following the success of the British Prime Minister's unit, several countries around the world embraced the idea, including Malaysia, in September 2009, the Malaysian government established the Performance Management Unit (PEMANDU)  Idris Jala was appointed minister in the Office of the Prime Minister and chief executive of [PEMANDU] to ensure the successful implementation of the transformative agenda, with the unit focusing on the public and the economy which need reform, it's also effectively affect other important issues such as crime prevention and corruption reduction Improvement of rural city infrastructure (Worldbank, 2017).

Delivery units has been introduced by various governments for tackling important challenges of implementation, delivering on important priorities, and responding to citizen needs better. In spite of sticking to good policies, governments face challenges of implementation in delivering results. The results expected by citizens from the government normally have a long chain of results from defining priorities of policy to the formulation of policy and outcomes of service delivery to citizens. It has been recognized by government that optimizing the delivery of service is the key to achieve better outcomes for citizens. At the central part of the government, DUs form a kind of solution. Under the right conditions, direct units can help in strengthening the link between citizen outcomes and given policy. They can also operate for creating strong incentives of performance, driving the sector of public to manufacture outputs of high-quality in an accountable and efficient way.

PEMANDU was introduced by Malaysia in 2009. Ever since its inception, it has assisted in facilitating and designing the application of NTP or National Transformation Program, a set of effective strategic priorities of the government broken down into quite strong and concrete inventions. NTP actually has been applied by agencies, departments, and ministries (MDAs) while PEMANDU played its role to de-bottleneck, monitor, and track the process. The unit became the most prominent and largest DUs in the globe with various nations looking to learn from their experience.

The experience of Malaysia with PEMANDU is actually best recognized in the context of the wider development journey of the nation. The development of Malaysian public sector which seems to pre-date PEMANDU and has formulated an enabling environment that has placed the stage for the DU. Ever since the independence of the country, the public sector of the Malaysia has concentrated on solving the challenges of development including the delivery of services for eradicating poverty and building the infrastructure for enabling its economy’s diversified growth. The concentration has been on the outcomes from the very start. Their orientation of performance has created the elements of performance culture. With the development of public sector, it seemingly gave rise to an institutional environment for the management of performance. The factors or elements offered the bases on which PEMANDU could create.

Idris Jala has been tasked with leading the government transformation program (GTP) and the Economic Transformation program (ETP), which will boost Malaysia's efforts and bring it into the ranks of developed countries with high incomes by the year 2020.

By the design, multiples roles are fulfilled by PEMANDU that are well0sequenced and well-defined. The signature methodology of PEMANDU makes sure that it is focusing on important tasks at almost every point in time. These 8 steps seem to begin with the strategic direction from cabinets on the priorities of the government. These high-level priorities were broken down and this process was helped by PEMANDU into strong interventions included in NTP while creating the ownership of stakeholder. Right after that, PEMANDU has served as a technical support to the MEDA in the implementation of NTP including monitoring and setting the KPI or key performance indicator. If problems have taken place during the process of implementation, the process of escalated by PEMANDU to progressively higher levels of process of decision-making for de-bottlenecking the implementation process. Towards the cycle end, the KPIs which were reported were authenticated by the third party and interlinked to the public and stakeholders through an annual report.

Implementation support and Follow up Unit (ISFU)

            On October 17, the implementation and follow-up support unit was established in the Sultanate of Oman by Royal Decree No. (50/2016), and Dr. Khamis Al-Jabri was appointed as the head of the unit, under the umbrella of the royal court, the highest hierarchy of government units in Oman. The unit was created to find solutions in terms of economic diversification as well as to improve the performance of government institutions. The support unit is now an eye for the performance of government units and is the link between various agencies to facilitate the implementation of late projects in the light of some of the difficulties faced by these projects.

One of the unit's plans is to build a bridge between various entities by establishing a number of laboratories that will reduce the course of action.  

The ISFU is actually an independent body which reports to the Royal Court’s Minister of Dewan. The primary role of unit is all about providing support to governmental bodies and making them implement their programs and plans in a better way on the basis of clear structure of governance and KPIs. The Unit seemingly works with different stakeholders who are involved in the process of implementation and helps with resolving the issues during the execution of initiatives or projects. This is carried out by adopting a robust and clear mechanism of monitoring. In additionally, in line with various requirements of the development plans associated with the execution of projects related to economic diversification, it is expected that various projects might be implemented and other might need specific adjustments and alternations during the execution as the need emerges. Additionally, various projects might be reconsidered and may need the introduction of alternative solutions and new ideas depending on economic conditions and opportunities that might take place during the process of implementation (ISFU, 2017).

Projects and initiatives face challenges by coordinating with the forces of technical tasks, ministerial committee, and sponsors of Excellences Ministers. The ministerial committee actually comprises of ministers formed under Sultan Qaboos bin Said’s directives for studying the monetary, financial, economic, and social situations. This type of methodology has been fruitful in resolving various issues during the process of implementation. Over the time, as an important part of the methodology of work, the projects proceeded by labs have been subjected to a consistent review and evaluation in terms of legislative and legal difficulties, financial costs, directs impacts, overlapping disciplines, and their capability of achieving the envisaged objectives. This has assisted in focusing the efforts on important projects that have a significant effect on the economic activity and business (Omanminingexpo, 2019).

The Unit seemingly works with different stakeholders who are involved in the process of implementation and helps with resolving the issues during the execution of initiatives or projects. It is actually hoped by the government that they would reach even better levels in the future and the coming time by taking an advantage of the experience and lessons gained. Under the National Program for the Enhancement of Economic Diversification, the five sectors weren’t only the focus points and checkpoints for the Unit as it developed also another program with the goal of optimizing the environment of business in the Sultanate. In this program, the unit team along with their fellows in several institutions of government worked quite closely for overcoming obstacles in optimizing the ranking of Sultanate in global indicators and attracting investments.

In addition, the unit also formulated a taskforce for establishing a lab of fisheries which resulted in the presentation of ninety projects and initiatives with a total value of investment about 1 billion Omani Rials. It was actually among the labor that achieved broad commendation from various observers. The unit also consistently prepared for mining and energy labs. Therefore, a new force of task was created particularly for supporting the results of these 3 sectors. During the publishing of several challenges and achievements classified the initiative completion through various types of media, the involvement of institutions of private sector, and involvement of various community’s segments.

It is actually the objective of the Unit to facilitate the development of thorough plans of implementation with the MDU, facilitate the development ministerial and national KPI for the projects, evaluate, monitor, and facilitate the progress of implementation and support the MDU for ensuring delivering of projects which are identified.

It is also the goal of this Unit to offer problem solving support various Ministries on the outcomes of lab implementation as well as help overcome the cross-ministerial problems, serve as a secretariat to the high-level platform of problem-solving and reporting on the KPI progress, participating and coordinating in the Committees of Sectoral Steering, help detailed dialogues of performance among the Lead Ministers and ISFU Minister, facilitate and organize new labs on the basis of national important areas, communicate the results of national projects to public which are supervised by the unit, carrying out the independent assessment of the performance of result areas, organizing public forums for discussing progress in the application and implementation of projects and programs. In addition, during the first week, the technical teams of ISFU through the Delivery Units of Ministry liaise with each project’s owner for requesting updates on the projects which are being monitored. The metrics are circulated and compiled in the tracker of KPI.

1.5 Oman's Economic history

The Sultanate of Oman was one of the Arabian Gulf Countries that relied entirely on oil and gas as a source of national income. Therefore, the impact of the current economic crisis which resulted from the decline in oil prices significantly reduced an economic and living value due to lack of diversification of sources of income and lack of alternatives.

 Since the beginning of the renaissance of Oman in 1970, the economic situation in the country depends entirely on oil revenues despite the abundance of wealth and unutilized resources. The oil production sector dominates the Omani economy by 59% of the Sultanate's GDP, while the mining and quarrying sector accounts for 21.2% of GDP.
The oil crisis hit all the producing countries but the impact varies from one country to another depending on the diversity of the economy of each country and the size of sovereign funds each. In this situation, it is imperative to make strenuous efforts to achieve economic diversification away from the oil sector, namely oil, and gas (Knack, 2009).

 The five-year plans in the Sultanate of Oman have been a platform for the development of branches of the national economy, the improvement of infrastructure, the organization of all educational activities and the cultural and scientific activities that contribute effectively to the development and progress of the country.

Through the 47 years of the renaissance of the Sultanate of Oman, the objectives of the development stages and their five-year plans have not been achieved in an integrated manner. Perhaps, this has hindered the development of laws, regulations, and bureaucracy in simplifying procedures. What Oman needs is a human development in the first place, more than just finding other sources of income, which will only happen by expanding humanitarian options in the economic, social, political, and cultural fields?

The equation of human development

Human Capabilities = Economic, Political, and Social Opportunities

Human capacity development is carried out through health, education, and skills and acquisition.

Economic opportunities are employment.

Political opportunities are to participate in decision-making. 

 Due to the lack of economic alternatives in the Arab region, which relied heavily on oil, the impact of the decline in world oil prices has become even greater. However, through previous experiences, there has been no governmental movement in the region in terms of finding other economic and developmental sources in order to compensate for any deterioration in world oil prices.

 The current decline in oil prices along with the social development in the aspect of economic culture and the familiarity with the current status quo forced governments to rethink the development and economic plans to improve the standard of living of the peoples and to avoid any failure caused by the expected decline in oil and the lack of total dependence on it.

 Many years after the adoption of the vision of the future of Oman 2020, it is important to develop a new vision of the Sultanate takes into account. The developments of the current phase and the opportunities available and highlighted by Short-, medium- and long-term challenges.

The lack of visibility and focus on addressing immediate challenges
Such as the problem of job seekers and the fall in oil prices without a systematic plan that would distract the efforts of the private sector and weaken and help attract foreign investment does not direct domestic investment in both public and private  productivity and competitiveness.

 A genuine partnership is needed between the public and private sector and its active contribution by the civil society to create a new vision for the Sultanate. Through this view, the Government of the Sultanate of Oman has sought to find a qualitative transfer in the way of investing the natural wealth which the Sultanate possesses in many aspects, the most important of which is the manufacturing sector, labor, and the tourism sector in addition to the logistics sector and other vital sectors

In order to cope with this crisis, the government had to find alternatives and solutions to address the financial deficit of this crisis and to develop the country’s economy, as well as the development of development and community aspects. Implementation Support and Follow-up Unit (ISFU) was established by a Royal Decree No. 50/2016 to address and provide solutions in projects related to the economy of the country and to facilitate its operations and to attract foreign investments and try to find alternatives and solutions other than oil. In addition, trying to overcome the difficulties and address the challenges faced by the Sultanate in its development sectors.

The ISFU has established several laboratories to reduce the gap between the decision makers and implemented projects in order to unify efforts and reduce the implementation of any decision. The idea in setting up these laboratories is to invite government units to a single table, discuss each project separately, identify problems and find solutions in order to facilitate their implementation. It is also important to study and analyze the experience of establishing the unit and the challenges it will face

As a kind of benefiting from previous experiences in some countries of the world, which was able to move from economically weak to strong countries, the ISFU has used the Malaysian Government Transformation Programmer as a bench mark and idol to follow. That program contributed a lot to the recent revival of Malaysia Performance Management & Delivery Unit (PEMANDU), and made it one of the world's greatest economic countries worldwide.

The challenges that will face the ISFU are so many and they should be identified and discussed deeply. Both government and society in Oman are waiting for the results and achievements from establishing the ISFU. From my point of view, while we are waiting, it is also important to study the whole experience of the ISFU from the begging till today.