A fresh look at a policy sciences methodology: collaborative modeling for more effective policy

Collaborative modeling offers a novel methodology that integrates core ideals in the policy sciences. The principles behind collaborative modeling enable policy researchers and decision makers to address interdisciplinarity, complex systems, and public input in the policy process. This approach ideally utilizes system dynamics to enable a multidisciplinary group to explore the relationships in a complex system. We propose that there is a spectrum of possibilities for applying collaborative modeling in the policy arena, ranging from the purely academic through full collaboration among subject matter experts, the general public, and decision makers. Likewise, there is a spectrum of options for invoking collaboration within the policy process. Results from our experiences suggest that participants in a collaborative modeling project develop a deeper level of understanding about the complexity in the policy issue being addressed; increase their agreement about root problems; and gain an appreciation for the uncertainty inherent in data and methods in studying complex systems. We conclude that these attributes of collaborative modeling make it an attractive option for improving the decision-making process as well as on-the-ground decisions.     

Water quality modeling for environmental management: Lessons from the policy sciences

Models are used in many policy arenas to predict the future consequences of current decisions. A model is typically viewed as a rational, objective means of processing complex information to predict future conditions. With respect to socioeconomic modeling, policy scientists have found that models frequently do not live up to these promises – they often incorporate the modelers' biases, are difficult for decision makers to use, and do a poor job of point predictions. While awareness of these characteristics of socioeconomic models has increased, less attention has been paid to such factors in environmental modeling. This paper explores the implications of policy scientists' observations about socioeconomic models for the use of water quality models environmental decision making. For example, the relatively simple task of modeling for an estuarine waste load allocation decision incorporates judgment in model choice, calibration, and use. More complex watershed models involve even more choices that have implications for decision making. Thus, environmental models are not strictly technical inputs to the policy process. Model users, regulators, and the public should be aware of the judgments and uncertainties involved in surface water quality modeling so that model results are used appropriately in the decision-making process.     

Simulation and Managerial Decision Making:A Double‐Loop Learning Framework

Systems approaches present opportunities for public managers and policy makers to view policies and programs in a broader context. This article presents a framework to explain how simulation modeling promotes double‐loop learning in management teams by building and exploring collective mental models as well as by enhancing accuracy of the mental models. The authors discuss the types of problems that may benefit from simulation modeling and illustrate how double‐loop learning occurs in the process of dynamic hypothesis testing. Using a case from New York State's Division of Disability Determination, the article shows how simulation modeling built confidence in a management team's decision by providing the team with tools to share and examine multiple hypotheses about a declining trend in initial disability recipients in the state between 1998 and 2004.     

Budget Process Reform: Waiting for Godot

The unraveling of the budget process described by Irene Rubin will have extraordinary consequences for the long-term budget outlook facing the nation. The retirement of the baby boom generation will prompt unprecedented and unsustainable structural fiscal imbalances for decades to come. Early policy action on the spending and revenue sides of the budget is critical to avert fiscal and economic crisis and to phase in changes in order to avoid precipitous and politically perilous actions in the future. Yet such actions constitute what amounts to a politically unnatural act, as one generation of political leaders is asked to make sacrifices in current policies benefiting future generations. Budget process reforms can serve to highlight the salience of these issues and help deal with the significant political hurdles faced by decision makers in making these intertemporal budgeting trade-offs. Ironically, the need for budget rules and processes has intensified as policy makers have become more vulnerable to polarized political parties, ever more watchful media, and mobilized interest groups. Budget rules and processes can help policy makers cope by protecting their ability to make the hard choices that will be necessary. The pressures for budget process reform will accelerate as the current financial crisis increases near-term budgetary pressures, promoting greater alignment between near-term and long-term fiscal problems.     

How policy instruments are chosen: patterns of decision makers’ choices

Policy instruments are a fundamental component of public policies. Policy instruments are often a result of mediation within the policy design process, whenever decision makers reshape existing instruments without introducing any real innovation. This results in imitation, layering and ambiguity in tool choice selection, and raises the theoretical problem of the logic according to which decision makers choose certain specific policy instruments rather than others. Decision makers may have different reasons for choosing certain specific instruments, although these reasons should be connected to the two main purposes of decision-making, that is, the search for effectiveness and the construction of a shared sense, a common acceptance. Thus, the choice of instruments is a question of potentially conflicting drivers that decision makers have to cope with within a specific decisional situation, when asked to solve those problems that have arisen. This paper examines this question and offers an analytical framework based on the two main factors in terms of which the selection of instruments is channelled and assessed: legitimacy and instrumentality. The boundaries created by how decision makers perceive these two dimensions mean that only four selection patterns can be chosen by decision makers: hybridization, stratification, contamination or routinization.     

Taking Chances: Evaluating Risk as a Guide to Better Use of Best Practices

Recent attention to best practices has resulted in a complex array of terminology and a number of compendia of effective practices that may be daunting to public policy makers and administrators seeking solutions to important public problems. This study clarifies these distinctions and builds on them to create a decision tool that will help policy makers as they use best practice information in program adoption or development. Decision makers must know their goals in seeking out best practices. As they evaluate potential practices, they should consider not only the quality of available evidence of effectiveness but also the risk of harm to constituents and the cost per unit of benefit generated. The study applies the rubric to an emerging practice in support services for individuals with disabilities known as Cash and Counseling, demonstrating that the practice is low risk, cost neutral, and improves effectiveness and consumer satisfaction. The tool highlights the judgmental elements of concern in the decision process while providing a means to assess multiple decision dimensions in a coherent fashion.     

Regulation is evil: An application of narrative policy analysis to regulatory debate in New Zealand

Using findings from research on the implementation of telephone number portability in New Zealand, we demonstrate how narrative analysis can account for how particular influence stories, or policy narratives, come to dominate the policy process. In this paper, we extend the concept of metanarrative, which to date has been interpreted as a story that policy makers use to recast policy problems. Policy metanarratives are shown to have strong pre-figurative effects and to be more pervasive than previously recognised.     

The Kansas Financial Information System (KFIS): Policy Design and Policy Failure

States are reported to have spent large sums of money on information resources management in financial year (FY) 1989. Of concern to several authors is the fact that most states have not attempted to integrate their accounting and budgeting systems. Calls for integrating accounting, budgeting, and personnel systems frequently fail to take into account the design problems associated with such tasks. This article uses a case study of the Kansas Financial Information System (KFIS) to highlight the importance of policy design to successful policy implementation. The results support the theory that design is an integral part of decision making and policy development. Policy design is an important determinant of implementation outcomes.     

Talking trash about landfills: Using quantitative scoring schemes in landfill siting processes

Policymakers and the public often turn to scientific experts for help in making decisions about complex policy problems. Such decisions, however, may involve trade‐offs among desired goals and so require considerable technical and political judgment. Typically there is no objectively "best" answer, although some answers may be better than others. We use a case study of a landfill siting process in Orange County, North Carolina, to analyze how quantitative scoring schemes may best be used to facilitate site selection processes. Quantitative scoring schemes, used and interpreted properly, can help policymakers and the public focus their attention on central rather than peripheral issues, and thereby conduct a more informed political debate. For the quantitative scoring scheme to fulfill this role, however, the community must be explicit about how the scoring scheme will be used within the larger decisionmaking framework. Clarifying the power and limitations of quantitative scoring schemes shows promise for facilitating decisionmaking regarding other locally unpopular land use siting processes, as well as any public policy decision involving multiple objectives. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

POLICY MODELING TO SUPPORT ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONMAKING ON THE NEW YORK STATE HIV TESTING LAW

A recent New York law requires medical providers to offer HIV tests as part of routine care. We developed a system dynamics simulation model of the HIV testing and care system to help administrators understand the law's potential epidemic impact, resource needs, strategies to improve implementation, and appropriate outcome indicators for future policy evaluations once postlaw data become available. Policy modeling allowed us to synthesize information from numerous sources including quantitative administrative data sets and practitioners’ content expertise, structure the information to be viewed both numerically and visually, and organize consensus for decisionmaking purposes. This case illustrates how policy modeling can provide an integrated framework for administrators to examine policy problems in complex systems, particularly when data time lags limit pre–post comparisons and key outcomes cannot be measured directly.     

Getting One's Way in Policy Debates: Influence Tactics Used in Group Decision-Making Settings

This study moves beyond traditional approaches to public administration and public policy decision making to consider how interpersonal influence tactics affect policy decisions in group decision-making settings. Decision makers reported their own use of interpersonal influence tactics to achieve policy objectives, as well as those used against them. Responses were compared to individual decisions made over the course of policy-formulation meetings. The results indicate that the most popular techniques were inspirational appeals and rational persuasion. The most effective techniques for influencing participants varied according to the type of decision to be made: During the visioning process, coalition tactics and inspirational appeals proved most effective; for more concrete decisions about current issues, rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, and consultation influenced decisions.     

Partisan views on the economy

In this paper it is argued that political parties may have incentives to adopt a partisan view on the working of the economic system. Our approach is based on a dynamical spatial voting model in which political parties are policy oriented. This model revolves around two interrelated issues x and y. The policy maker sets x directly. There exist two views on the relationship between x and y. Model uncertainty confronts policy makers with the problem of the selection of a model to base their actions on. We show that if voters have imperfect information about the working of the economic system that model selection contains a strategic element. Policy makers are inclined to adopt a view on the working of the economic system which fits in with their preferences. There is no inherent logic that places monetarists to the right of New Economists. They have different models of economic mechanism, but they need not have different political values. A conservative can be a Keynesian and a liberal a monetarist. These combinations are in fact surprisingly rare. James Tobin, 1974,The New Economics One Decade Older, p. 62.     

Stewardship of quality of care in health systems: Core functions,common pitfalls,and potential solutions

National Ministries of Health in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) have a key role to play as stewards of the quality agenda in their health systems. This paper uses a previously developed six‐point framework for stewardship (strategy formulation, intersectoral collaboration, governance and accountability, health system design, policy and regulation, and intelligence generation) and identifies specific examples of activities in LMICs in each of these domains, pitfalls to avoid, and possible solutions to these pitfalls. Many LMICs now have quality strategies with clear vision statements. There are good examples of quality agencies and donor collaboration councils to coordinate activities across different sectors. There are multiple options for accountability, including public reporting, community accountability structures, results‐based payment, accreditation, and inspection. To improve health system design, available tools include decision support tools, task‐shifting models, supply chain management, and programs to train quality improvement staff. Policy options include legislation on disclosure of adverse events, and regulations to ensure skills of health care providers. Lastly, health information tools include patient registries, facility surveys, hospital discharge abstracts, standardized population and patient surveys, and dedicated agencies for reporting on quality. Policy‐makers can use this article to identify options for driving the quality agenda and address anticipated implementation barriers.     

Rethinking ‘Five Eyes’ Security Intelligence Collection Policies and Practice Post Snowden

The Edward Snowden leaks challenge policy makers and the public's understanding and perspectives on the role of security intelligence in liberal democratic states. This article explores the challenges confronting security intelligence collection by the ‘Five Eyes’ countries – particularly those most affected by the leaks. We argue that the debate now needs to move beyond simplistic notions of privacy vs. security to a more detailed understanding of the policy and ethical dilemmas confronting policy makers and intelligence agencies. To that end, we provide a schematic framework (methods, context and target) to promote a better understanding of the practical, policy and ethical problems for security intelligence collection emerging post Snowden. The framework is a first step in identifying common principles that could be used develop an ethically informed set of policy guidelines to help decision makers better navigate between citizen's two basic rights: security and privacy.     

Assumptions within Policy: A Case Study of Information Communications and Technology Policy

The deeply embedded nature of dominant assumptions creates an accepted language and way of thinking about ICT, leaving little space for alternative perspectives and ideologies. Policy directions link information technology, the information economy, innovation, competition and global markets. Innovation and information and communications technology constructs a particular application of innovation and directs funding accordingly. Given that policy is about how we categorise, about naming and naming shapes action, the question is what lenses do policy makers use to make choices in their synthesis of social, political and economic life? Using the Australian Information Communications and Technology (ICT) policy as a case study, this article will argue that policy reflects the economic, social and political ideologies of the decision makers. Despite opportunities for input into policy multiple perspectives are limited. Specifically the article looks at claims around consultation, the assumption that the information economy will benefit all Australians, the development of framework conditions for the information economy and the role of government.     

The politics of policy diffusion

This article discusses the recent literature on policy diffusion and puts forward a new articulation of its political dimensions. Policy diffusion means that policies in one unit (country, state, city, etc.) are influenced by the policies of other units. The diffusion literature conceptualises these interdependencies with four mechanisms: learning, competition, coercion and emulation. The article identifies a model of diffusion that is dominant in the diffusion literature. According to this model, policies spread because decision makers evaluate the policy implications of the actions of other units. It is argued that the role of politics remains in the background in this model, and the article shows how going beyond a narrow focus on policy adoptions helps us to consider the politics of policy diffusion more explicitly.     

The moment you decide,you divide: How politicians assess procedural fairness

Are politicians more rational decision makers than citizens? This article contributes to the ongoing debate by examining how politicians and citizens assess the fairness of the process leading to a controversial policy decision. It contains theories as to why it is tempting to match the favourability of policy decision with a fairness assessment of the preceding process, and how politicians and citizens differ in their approach to the task. Having derived three hypotheses, parallel scenario experiments are run in large samples of Swedish politicians and citizens, in which the outcome and fairness of a policy decision process are manipulated. As predicted, it is found that both politicians and citizens match the favourability of the decision with the assessment of the process, that these self-serving biases are stronger among politicians, and that policy engagement accounts for the group-level difference.     

A System-of-Systems Perspective for Public Policy Decisions

Problems of increasing complexity are facing decision makers within government and industry, and the key characteristic of these problems is that they are of system-of-systems type. With multiple, heterogeneous, distributed systems involved (including policies and economies as well as technologies), effective analysis for decision-support quickly becomes unmanageable within the “stovepipe” context that still characterizes many organizations in the research and development community. There is not a process/field of study in place that can enable us to systematically solve these types of problems, exemplified by the Next Generation Transportation System. While indeed numerous tools are available to help, they cannot be used effectively because the people who build and understand the tools all speak different languages. Much confusion still remains about words and phrases for system-of-systems type problems, let alone the best modeling approaches for dealing with them. While pockets of organizational restructuring may address this challenge for particular projects, there is a lack of systematic thinking at the basic level about how to address the challenges. This paper recommends that intellectual, financial, and institutional resources be invested for the purpose of initiating and nurturing a field of study that will enable us to better address this important type of problem. The future of transportation serves as a motivating example of a multidomain, system-of-systems problem of critical importance to the nation and in need of effective decision-support. The analogy of creating better maps and “navigation aids” for decision makers will be employed, emphasizing that, when navigating a minefield, knowing where not to go is the key factor in successfully traversing the terrain (i.e., making wise decisions).     

What's wrong with the Intelligence Cycle

In the modern era, almost all intelligence professionals will study the Intelligence Cycle as a kind of gospel of how intelligence functions. Yet it is not a particularly good model, since the cyclical pattern does not describe what really happens. Policy officials rarely give collection guidance. Collection and analysis, which are supposed to work in tandem, in fact work more properly in parallel. Finally, the idea that decision makers wait for the delivery of intelligence before making policy decisions is equally incorrect. In the modern era, policy officials seem to want intelligence to support policy rather than to inform it. The Intelligence Cycle also fails to consider either counter-intelligence or covert action. Taken as a whole, the cycle concept is a flawed model, but nevertheless continues to be taught in the US and around the world.