Saudi Arabia’s policy landscape is changing faster than you can say ‘Vision 2030’. Where once stood an ineffective civil service, lax regulations and strong public opposition to change now stands a firm commitment to bringing policymaking into the 21st century (and quickly). As somebody used to the glacial rate of policy development and implementation seen in ‘the West’, the speed of these developments was certainly unexpected.

For example, through her talk on the private sector’s role in achieving Vision 2030, Khlood Al Dukheil listed just a few of the countless initiatives recently introduced by the Kingdom to facilitate private sector investment. These included the creation of a flagship Ministry of Industry, the launch of policy initiatives covering areas such as fintech and SMEs and the deployment of a 200bn Riyal stimulus package to support these endeavours. Organisations such as KAPSARC, the largest energy-focused research institution in the Kingdom, also focus on policy implications in the hope of using science and research to inform the policy debate.

Later in the session, our speaker then went on to proudly exclaim that ‘today, the government is online’. We were told that this has the advantage of not only automating processes, thus reducing corruption and human error, but also ensuring a bureaucracy that is only one click or email away. This is in stark contrast to many other bureaucracies across the world, as the transition from paper to screens requires substantial sums of money and a complete overhaul of governmental processes.

The typical agents of policymaking are also changing. Where once expensive management consulting firms such as Deloitte and McKinsey were flown in from the West to draft glossy policy reports, today the Kingdom pours investment into its inefficient civil service. This has meant greater remuneration for staff (in exchange for increased working hours) and the introduction of initiatives aimed at retaining institutional knowledge within the service. In fact, we learned that only two days prior to the talk, a Royal Decree had been passed banning all foreign consultancies from taking on work that could be carried out by domestic firms instead. As a result, rather than being imported as has been the case for decades, the Kingdom’s policymaking is now becoming Saudi-led.

However, despite these drastic changes to Saudi Arabia’s policymaking processes, some things appear to have changed little. In her talk about the role of Saudi women in the transformation of their country, Dr Huda Al-Helaissi stated that ‘for many years, the government has made decisions after first asking the people’. Whilst still a far cry from the typical ‘democratic’ model of elections and referenda seen in Europe and North America, this has ensured that policymaking is a more transparent and community-led process than it would otherwise have been.

It appears that the days of ineffective policy development are behind Saudi Arabia. Just what this means for the Kingdom itself is yet to be discovered. However, one thing is for sure: If the rate of change seen so far continues, the future Saudi Arabia will be almost unrecognisable to those familiar with the Kingdom at present.

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My name is Rory Daniels and I recently graduated from King’s College London studying BSc Political Economy. Next year I’ll be studying MSc Global Politics at the London School of Economics. It was Gateway KSA’s emphasis on visiting multiple cities across the Kingdom that particularly appealed to me, as very rarely do people get to experience such a diverse range of environments when travelling to a country. The opportunity to mix with expert speakers and likeminded participants also drew me to the programme.