QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

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""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSys
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSys »

Posted by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSystems"" <dynbiosys@verizon.net> Greetings,

I am curious to know to what extent has SD played, if any, in decision making and management at the Federal level other than in the military.
Not only in the US but elsewhere as well.

Lou
Posted by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSystems"" <dynbiosys@verizon.net> posting date Mon, 11 Dec 2006 06:38:33 -0800 _______________________________________________
""Myers, Rodney Slyvester CIV""
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Myers, Rodney Slyvester CIV"" »

Posted by ""Myers, Rodney Slyvester CIV"" <rodney.myers@navy.mil> Notice the 2006 system dynamics society's international conference proceedings... The US centers for disease control has been using the methodology....


Respectfully,

Rodney Myers
Operations Research Analyst
Navy Personnel Research Studies & Technology (NPRST) 5720 Integrity Drive, Building 785 Millington, Tennessee 38055-1000 Posted by ""Myers, Rodney Slyvester CIV"" <rodney.myers@navy.mil> posting date Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:02:09 -0600 _______________________________________________
""Mitchel A. Kling, M.D.""
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Mitchel A. Kling, M.D."" »

Posted by ""Mitchel A. Kling, M.D."" <klingm@mail.nih.gov> I¹ve been wondering the same thing myself (not least because of having worked in the US Federal government for over 20 years). Applications to Federal government operations seem to be lacking among much of the SD literature that I have read, as opposed to those in industry or policymaking at local or regional levels.

- Mitch
-----------------------------------
Mitchel A. Kling, M.D.
Staff Clinician
Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program
National Institute of Mental Health
NIH Bldg. 10 Room 2D-46
10 Center Drive, MSC 1284
Bethesda, MD 20892-1284
Posted by ""Mitchel A. Kling, M.D."" <klingm@mail.nih.gov> posting date Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:42:49 -0500 _______________________________________________
Jim Thompson
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by Jim Thompson »

Posted by Jim Thompson <james.thompson@strath.ac.uk> Louis Macovsky wrote ""I am curious to know to what extent has SD played, if any, in decision making and management at the Federal level other than in the military."" That is a difficult question to answer without a thorough survey since assessing impact on social policy decisions and management is subjective.

In the late 1990s I consulted to a consortium of pharmaceuticals firms on the economic impact of a proposed initiative to detect and treat hypertension in Italy. We chose the region of Ravenna to study the incidence and prevalence of hypertension and likely influence of that disease on acute events including heart attacks and stroke. That work produced some useful insights into hospital capacity planning, the economics of public health policies and the like. I retain the exploratory models and underlying data, but I do not have a copy of the final report. As I understand, our work influenced legislation to extensively modify public health policy and substantially increase efforts to detect and treat hypertension. If anyone is interested in the simulation model development, please contact me directly.

A few years earlier, Jim Hines and I participated in a methodology assessment of system dynamics done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The question was how to design federal financial guarantee programs to be more robust and less prone to problems. We chose to study the single-family housing finance market as a prominent example of a large and complicated marketplace affected by various forms of federal financial guarantees, e.g. Fannie Mae, Ginnie Mae, VA, FHA, FDIC. In essence, our work helped to define the problems caused by a system of federal financial guarantees and provided insight on how to avoid those problems.

In addition to providing the GAO with an example of the application of system dynamics for methodology assessment, results of our work were reported to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, which was considering privatizing the federal interstate road system and providing guarantees for financing the transactions. It is difficult to assess the impact of our work on the decisions taken by the Committee, but we pointed out that such guarantees are a primary cause of price inflation and pose other significant challenges.

In their final report, the GAO methodology assessment team made several egregious errors which Jim and I were not able to have corrected. Nevertheless, the entire engagement was a successful application of the methodology to policy design and testing at the federal level. Given that the work was done quite awhile ago, it may be difficult to access copies of our work or the GAO report. If anyone is interested in our work or the final report, please contact me and I will try to supply you with copies in the public domain.

Regards,
Jim Thompson
Posted by Jim Thompson <james.thompson@strath.ac.uk> posting date Wed, 13 Dec 2006 11:52:02 -0500 _______________________________________________
Bill Harris
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by Bill Harris »

Posted by Bill Harris <bill_harris@facilitatedsystems.com>

>> Doing background research it seems that system dynamics ticks all the
>> right boxes, but before going down a learning path wanted confidence
>> I was in the right ball park.


I'd give you two cautions. First, system dynamics is usually used to solve a problem, not to model a system, for it's hard to know when to stop modeling if you want to create a model that can answer any question you throw at it. So, if you have a particular issue that concerns you in project planning, system dynamics may be a great tool to help you make sense of it and figure out a way to reduce or eliminate it. If you need a system to which you can tell the characteristics of a project and have it spew out the decisions you need to take (as you might do with a linear programming system), I think you have a harder job.

Second, system dynamics is a tool for making sense of feedback systems, and feedback requires a certain amount of time to engage. If you aren't concerned with the effects of feedback on your projects, you may not be as interested in this as some other approach (queueing simulations, for example, dynamic programming, or so-called ""discrete event simulations""). That said, you might look at the classic _Introduction to System Dynamics Modeling with Dynamo_ by George Richardson and Alexander Pugh. That book uses a project management problem as the example for its introduction of system dynamics, focusing on the problems caused by an accumulation of unrecognized but needed rework.

As you can see from the example in that book, the essence of the system dynamics contribution was in uncovering the impact of the accumulation of such hidden future rework. Such a model likely is best used to help you see that you need to pay attention to that accumulation of future rework if you want to avoid end-of-project surprises. Without creating a significantly more complex model and then testing and calibrating it well (think increased cost and time), that model may not be as useful in telling you that the cost of the rework is £3.52 for each £1.00 you save in upfront project reviews and thus picking the exact investment you should make in each part of the process to maximize your profit, for example.


>> Hope I have provided enough info.


I've probably sounded a bit pessimistic; I don't mean to. Now that you hear what I've said, I'd be curious to hear more about your goals for such a system. Precisely what sort of questions do you want to answer using this tool?

Bill
-- Bill Harris
Facilitated Systems
Posted by Bill Harris <bill_harris@facilitatedsystems.com>
posting date Wed, 13 Dec 2006 15:47:51 -0800 _______________________________________________
""E.Rouwette""
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""E.Rouwette"" »

Posted by ""E.Rouwette"" <E.Rouwette@fm.ru.nl> Mitchel,

In the Netherlands modelers from the Ministry of Justice, Significant (a consultancy firm) and Radboud University worked together in a project for federal government. The resulting model shows how the inflow of extra cases effects the criminal justice chain. The model includes the 'paper flow' (case reports from police to public prosecution to courts) and the 'person flow'
(people in different forms of detention). The model was built in 2004 and expanded at the beginning of this year, to estimate effects of a proposed law.
According to the modelers working at the Ministry of Justice, the model revealed unexpected consequences, for example with regard to accumulation of cases. This in turn influenced decisions on the IT support needed to implement the law. A paper on the first phase of the project was presented at the 2004 conference ( http://www.systemdynamics.org/conferenc ... 0ROUWE.pdf ).

Rod MacDonald and others at SUNY Albany have been working on projects at the federal level as well.

Beste regards,

Etiënne Rouwette
Paul van Hooff
Posted by ""E.Rouwette"" <E.Rouwette@fm.ru.nl> posting date Fri, 15 Dec 2006 09:24:34 +0100 _______________________________________________
""Andrew Jones""
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Andrew Jones"" »

Posted by ""Andrew Jones"" <apjones1@bellsouth.net> System Dynamicists:

Louis Macovsky wrote ""I am curious to know to what extent has SD played, if any, in decision making and management at the Federal level other than in the military.""

I have been part of several teams in the past four years working with other systems analysts (Jack Homer of Homer Consulting, Joyce Essien of Emory University, Gary Hirsch, Kris Wile of the Systems Thinking Collaborative, Don Seville of Sustainability Institute, Doc Klein of Uncharted Territories, and Bobby Milstein of CDC) to analyze and improve public health strategies for clients within different areas of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. federal agency dedicated to protecting the health of its citizens.

The efforts (some I've worked on and some I have not) have addressed diabetes, infant mortality, obesity, and (now just beginning) in hypertension/stroke/heart-disease.

In the diabetes area, where I am most familiar, the modeling and other efforts have had three main impacts from my perspective:
- increased the support within CDC for primary prevention as a strategy for addressing diabetes, thus affecting budgeting decisions,
- changed at least one national long range diabetes goal and improved goal-setting approaches, and
- created a vehicle (a model-based ""learning lab"" and stock/flow framework) for CDC health officers to engage and motivate other stakeholders in the system such as state-level public health leaders. The CDC has used different versions of the learning lab to work with leaders from seven U.S.
states and plan do to extend this approach.

Several citations (for the model insights, not the documentation of impacts on policy) include:

Jones, Homer, Murphy et al. Understanding Diabetes Population Dynamics Through Simulation Modeling and Experimentation, American Journal of Public Health, March 2006.

Milstein, Jones, Homer et al. Finding Plausible Futures for Diabetes
Prevalence: A System Dynamics Analysis of the Healthy People 2010 Objectives, upcoming in Preventing Chronic Disease, summer 2007.

There are also papers in the 2004 and 2006 SDS conference proceedings.

Sincerely,

Drew Jones
Sustainability Institute
Posted by ""Andrew Jones"" <apjones1@bellsouth.net> posting date Sat, 16 Dec 2006 13:36:32 -0500 _______________________________________________
""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSys
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSys »

Posted by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSystems"" <dynbiosys@verizon.net> Based on the too few examples in reply to my query on SD and national government policies AND the apparent lack of the US administration and Congress to recognize that decisions have (sometimes dire) unintended consequences, I would like to suggest that the SD community respond at the 25th International Conference of the SDS. Perhaps an open panel discussion. If we really believe we have a serious and valuable tool then how can we perfuse SD thinking and modeling into the everyday workings of government? There is no reason why the practioners of SD should not be fully employed/contracted by governments to participate in responding to the day's pressing problems. We should use the experience of those that have contributed with SD (apparently health providers and military,) as a foot in the door. But how?

Lou
Posted by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSystems"" <dynbiosys@verizon.net> posting date Thu, 28 Dec 2006 09:55:14 -0800 _______________________________________________
""Jim Thompson""
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Jim Thompson"" »

Posted by ""Jim Thompson"" <james.thompson@strath.ac.uk> Louis Macovsky proposes an open panel discussion of how we can perfuse SD thinking and modeling into the everyday workings of government at next summer's SDS conference.

The topic of how to win friends and influence people is certainly interesting. The challenge would be to frame a question that a panel could productively discuss and then attract the right discussants.

For example, articles in the past few Reviews described applications of SD to problems of the National Health Service in Great Britain, nuclear power generation in Russia, fisheries management in the U.S., logging in Indonesia, irrigation and water management in Spain, wildlife management
and so on.

Literature other than the Review contains evidence of a perfusion of SD thinking and modeling in government. Of popular interest, Gore's ""An Inconvenient Truth"" and Crichton's novel ""State of Fear"" season their positions with feedback simulation model results that suggest SD thinking.
Researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis publish in numerous journals and books, and much of their work is based in feedback simulation. But perhaps these examples raise the question of what ""SD thinking and modeling"" are.

Rigorous definitions and a thorough literature search would be useful groundwork for the proposed discussion.

Jim
Posted by ""Jim Thompson"" <james.thompson@strath.ac.uk> posting date Fri, 29 Dec 2006 08:59:52 -0500 _______________________________________________
Jean-Jacques Laublé
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by Jean-Jacques Laublé »

Posted by Jean-Jacques Laublé <jean-jacques.lauble@wanadoo.fr> Hi Lou

I am not of course directly concerned by the lack of use of SD by US government agencies but we have the same problem in France and in Europe.

For instance the French government has not been able to stabilize the economic growth the last ten years and after a high growth from the middle of 1998 to the end of 2000, the growth has been poor until now.
This stop and go is extraordinary expensive and destroys the confidence of the economic agents.

The use of SD would certainly help in building better policies.

But I think that the SD mailing list is not the best place for your question.

One solution is to question the people who decide to use or not to use SD.

For instance as an SDer you suspect the people from the government not to recognize that decisions have unintended consequences. I do not think that your government people are so stupid as to ignore that fact. I am sure that the reasons are different. The only solution to know something about these is to ask the people. And of course never say that you are an SD aficionados not even an aficionados of any special method. When I want really to know something I do not rely on any intermediary and inquire by myself and never say who I am. It is always very enlightening and often the opposite of any preconceived idea.

I do not say that this is easy. One must study who takes the decisions and how etc.

A second point is about the serious and valuable tool (SD). First what is a serious and valuable tool? And supposing that you have a good definition, is it a reason good enough to use SD? A better definition for me would be a useful tool.

I think that the way SD methodology approach any problem is starting from a point too near the methodology and not enough near the problem of the user.

One can observe this in all the text books for example where the method is very well exposed but where you never learn the concrete steps that must be undertaken to make sure that you are investing intelligently your time and money which is the higher concern of any user.

A good marketing approach is to start from the need of the customer and not from any already made product.

The SD community to my user opinion has to learn to adapt SD to the people problems and not the people to SD.

Regards and Happy New Year.

Jean-Jacques Laublé.
Posted by Jean-Jacques Laublé <jean-jacques.lauble@wanadoo.fr> posting date Sat, 30 Dec 2006 12:18:48 +0100 _______________________________________________
""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSys
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSys »

Posted by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSystems"" <dynbiosys@verizon.net> [abridged]

Happy New Year. Thank you for the responses to my query.
But let me continue the discussion...

Yes there are articles re: SD and policy at governmental levels in primarily our own journal as well as other what some might call esoteric journals such as the ones I read, e.g. Ecological Modelling. But I subscribe to a number of literature review engines and see very little SD modeling and simulation at the government policy levels. I was aware of the health modeling and simulations that responders listed as well as some regarding environmental policies e.g.
mining and forest management. Admittedly I do not follow economic and sociological journals. But I as I become more and more disappointed in my nation's domestic and foreign affairs I become increasingly frustrated in what I perceive as a lack of systems thinking and definitely the lack of using the tools and methodogy of which we are familiar. Certainly there are public exceptions to expousing systems thinking at high policy levels and recently Vice President Gore is one.

I do frequently Google with a variety of SD terms and get too few government references to SD. There are plenty of hits for ""system dynamics"" but rarely any that have the inclusion of our methodology and/or software tools.

I once gave a two-hour introduction to SD as a tool to policy makers in my state of Oregon. My subject was specific to environmental policy. Present in the room was former Oregon Governor Kitzhaber. He had to leave early but his comment on leaving was gratifying. He said something to the effect ""why are we not using this methodology, we should be."" There was a murmuring of agreement in the room. This was their introduction to SD. The purpose was to inform them that this tool existed and had a place in (environmental) policy making and monitoring. I provided journal articles with useful examples, references (my favorite is http://www.systemdynamics.org/DL-IntroSysDyn/start.htm
and note that this is from the US Dept. of Energy) and a list of SD providers other than myself. Over the following months interest died apparently due to the lack of funding to try something different.

Teachers, at least in my geographical region, have tried and tried again to infuse SD into their curriculum but apparently as funding goes so goes SD. I have tried as a volunteer in my own school district to introduce it. I can't speak for SD educators but those with whom I converse certainly seem frustrated. I have taught after school programs in SD to grades 3-6 (the kids do get it and they build basic single stock models using STELLA). The principal and teachers love it but it fails to go into the classroom as curriculum.

Certainly there is ""systems thinking"" in government but are our civil servants using systems tools - e.g. consensus building discussions, CLDs, and software as we are know them? I have spoken to my own Congressional representative and her aides. There is interest but it seems to end there.

If my failure is the messenger and not the message, why does it seem I am alone in the attempt.
Where are the other messengers? If they are there, why does a Congressional representative and her staff learn about it from me and not her colleagues, staff, departmental reports, and the literature she reads? Why do civil servants have to hear about it from me and not from the general work environment that they are in?

And again my open question is How? I as an individual have failed. If you have succeeded on a case by case basis, then how so? Was it because you represented an entity larger than yourself, e.g. a consulting firm (without naming firms there seems to be a concerted effort at government levels), academic institution, or ? But did you really succeed if SD methodology is not pervasive in discussion, if not by use, throughout all government agencies?

We should not be pointing out which problems can be approached with SD. Government servants and staff should be saying, ""Hey this is a problem for which a provider of SD modeling and simulation should be consulted.""


As for a discussion at SD conferences:

<< Rigorous definitions and a thorough literature search would be useful groundwork for the proposed discussion.>>

Perhaps these are the questions: 1) Have we failed to penetrate the important levels of government? 2) Do we even have a responsibility to do so?

Sincerely,

Louis

Posted by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSystems"" <dynbiosys@verizon.net> posting date Sat, 30 Dec 2006 12:48:08 -0800 _______________________________________________
""Jack Homer""
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Jack Homer"" »

Posted by ""Jack Homer"" <jhomer@comcast.net> Louis Macovsky's frustration at SD not penetrating further into the US government is similar to what we have heard on this listserve and at various conferences and informal chats over the years about what seems to be inadequate diffusion of SD in many spheres of life, be they business, education, personal, or public. Before continuing this lament further, let us first check whether our expectations are appropriate. Let's start by acknowledging that the number of SD practitioners is small. The numbers of expert practitioners in most advanced modeling fields are also small, so we are not alone in that respect. Unlike advanced modeling methods, simpler techniques such as statistical analysis, business accounting, straight-line forecasting, scenario writing, and role-playing exercises are fairly easily applied by non-experts and are easy to communicate to laypeople. And so, those easier methods are the ones that tend to be used.

At an ISDC many years ago, during a panel discussion on Growth of the Field, Jorgen Randers famously said, ""System Dynamics is hard."" Given the difficulty of our methodology and the accordingly small number of expert practitioners, I think we have done rather well in getting SD accepted and used in business and government. For that success we have many stellar people in the field to thank, who have been masters not only of analysis but also of communication.

In describing the situation, we should also distinguish between SD modeling and systems thinking more broadly. Prominent thinkers throughout the ages, and especially in this past century, have written about the unintended consequences of public and private decisions, and have urged a more whole-systems and long-term perspective for more effective decision-making. I would say that the essential notions of systems thinking are actually quite prevalent in the public sphere. We hear such notions arise whenever somebody pleads for a larger view that goes beyond short-term personal gain, and is able to trace out at least some of what that larger view would comprise.

Louis is understandably frustrated with U.S. domestic and foreign policy. But he is not alone, and we in SD are not alone. In the last several years, thousands of scientists have signed petitions and protested the misuse and abandonment of science in public decision-making. I think it would be helpful if we saw ourselves as not alone in our efforts to get people to think more wisely and systemically, but rather as part of a large chorus of rational voices working toward that end. There has been progress, and there have been setbacks, and all we and other concerned scientists and citizens can do is to keep working hard and looking for the best opportunities to make a real difference.

Jack Homer
Posted by ""Jack Homer"" <jhomer@comcast.net> posting date Sun, 31 Dec 2006 12:16:02 -0500 _______________________________________________
""Warren Tignor""
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Post by ""Warren Tignor"" »

Posted by ""Warren Tignor"" <wtignor@ieee.org> I would like to add the following ideas as possible answers to the question of how SDS can better serve government policy-making:


1. Update the ""Future of the Field"" dated 2001 to include a
collective SDS effort to influence government policy.
2. Create a Government Policy Special Interest Group.
3. Sponsor SD Fellows to government representatives, including the UN.
4. Send White Papers to governments from the SDS.
5. Initiate SDS Open Source Projects (e.g., collaborative papers and
models) that will have relevance to government policies.
6. Task the Policy Council to contact government representatives when
the SDS identifies relevant materials.

I look forward to further comments and ideas.

Happy New Year!

Warren Tignor
Posted by ""Warren Tignor"" <wtignor@ieee.org> posting date Sun, 31 Dec 2006 10:17:38 -0500 _______________________________________________
Bill Braun
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Post by Bill Braun »

Posted by Bill Braun <bbraun@hlthsys.com> Members of congress (Senate and House) are often involved in demonstration projects. (I have a colleague who has done such a project with Medicare related to Long-Term Care.) I suspect we need only a few champions to spread the benefits of using SD for policy development.

I suggest a panel for ISDC 2007 in Boston to generate possibilities for approaching policy makers and proposing pilot or demonstration projects in their favorite areas (e.g., Sen. Sherrod Brown and healthcare).

Bill Braun
Posted by Bill Braun <bbraun@hlthsys.com> posting date Mon, 01 Jan 2007 09:19:52 -0500 _______________________________________________
Ralf Lippold
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by Ralf Lippold »

Posted by Ralf Lippold <ralf_lippold@web.de> Hello together,

Jack has made an interesting point:

bring the theoretical ideas/models to the front line in an easy and practical way and find the boundary spanners who know enough of both worlds (business and methology) so you will -probably- get the practical usage of SD in business into gear;-))

Our plant manager of the newly built BMW Plant Leipzig, Peter Claussen, is giving a lecture for a whole semester on ""Systemic Factory Planning""
and that seems -in my eyes- a good way to bring SD into business life.
The students in the lecture -I myself am joining every two weeks- haven't heard of Systems Thinking and System Dynamics and after playing the Beer Game they are really interested in it (my impression).

Looking forward to bring SD in practical ways to business as I think that is a good way to anticipate business changes early in the process by doing similation or just discussion the stock-flow-models:-))

Best regards from Leipzig

Ralf

PS.: Everybody who is interested is kindly invited to join the group ""System Dynamics - practical usage in businesses"" at XING (former OpenBC) at https://www.xing.com/net/systemdynamics/ (if you need an invitation please send me an email).
--
Posted by Ralf Lippold <ralf_lippold@web.de> posting date Mon, 1 Jan 2007 19:15:24 +0100 _______________________________________________
Steve Roderick
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by Steve Roderick »

Posted by Steve Roderick <sroderic@mac.com> As a high school educator who uses system dynamics in the classroom I must concur that frustration is a primary sentiment when gauging the apparent penetration, or lack thereof, of systems principles into governmental policy. It is difficult to know just how prevalent these ideas are. My intuition rests with Jack Homer's assertion that there are many more people using systems thinking than we might suspect.

A larger question might be, ""when policy decisions are made, are those who use SD and other systems approaches listened to by those who know little of the field?"" For real penetration there must be a willingness among policy makers to use alternative approaches to viewing problems. Reaching a critical mass of individuals with this willingness takes time, and it is the ""glacial pace"" of change in the short term, that for me, brings on most of the frustration.

If we step back though, and view over the long term, perhaps it is a change that will occur over a time frame longer than one generation. We all know that exponential growth can be quite deceptive at first. Over the many years that I have been teaching it is clear that more and more of my students are being exposed to the fundamental ideas behind systems thinking.
They return from University and relate stories of how what they learned in high school concerning feedback and stocks and flows has been very useful to them in college.

I have been teaching for 30 years. Jay Forrester's Industrial Dynamics was published only a decade before that. Students from my first class of high school seniors are now only 48 years old, just reaching what is likely the age of governmental policy makers. Hopefully they will be the first of a steadily growing cohort of open minded thinkers willing to use these important ideas.

The concern expressed in the original posting was around penetration of systems ideas into policy making. To get there we need to help people think differently, and early education is our best hope.

Steven Roderick
Biology Teacher
Lincoln Sudbury Regional High School
Sudbury, MA
Posted by Steve Roderick <sroderic@mac.com> posting date Mon, 01 Jan 2007 11:19:57 -0500 _______________________________________________
""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSys
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSys »

Posted by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSystems"" <dynbiosys@verizon.net> Thank you for the positive listserve comments.

I would suggest a ""reinforcing"" discussion at Boston re: the suggestions made by Warren Tignor: I would add

7. Sponsor high school and undergraduate summer (or school year capstone -
undergraduate projects) internships in the offices of public servants
(all levels - city, state, and federal) and distribute these around the
country. The intern would have close mentorship of their instructors and
local practioners of SD. Not only would the students benefit but long
term relationships might be forged between governing bodies and the mentors.

8. A session to model the question - How can SDS reinforce the growth of SD
methodologies in government policy decisions?


Lou
Posted by ""Louis Macovsky, Dynamic BioSystems"" <dynbiosys@verizon.net> posting date Tue, 02 Jan 2007 10:16:42 -0800 _______________________________________________
""John W. Gunkler""
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Post by ""John W. Gunkler"" »

Posted by ""John W. Gunkler"" <jwgunkler@hpvs.net> Both Jack Homer and Steve Roderic have given me some hope about the diffusion of SD and, perhaps, some insight into how we may hasten that diffusion.

I agree that system dynamics modeling is ""hard"" -- but how hard must it be to diffuse the concepts, mental models, and habits of mind of SD (or ""systems thinking"" if you prefer) if teachers are successfully doing so with third-grade students? If Steve Roderic is succeeding with inattentive, hormone-raging high school students, cannot we succeed with others?

There have been many discussions, on this list and elsewhere, about what it takes to ""do"" SD. I side with Jay Forrester and many others who have said that it takes simulation modeling ... but is ""doing"" SD what we want policy makers to do?

We all can agree, I think, that it's a fool's errand to try to teach every important decision maker, in the various spheres of life, to be able to create SD simulations. And that's the part that's ""hard."" So, what is it we're trying to do? Let me suggest (at minimum):

1. Convince decision makers (in government, education, business, environment, etc.) of the unique benefits of SD modeling (assuming that we can clearly articulate what those benefits are!)

2. Provide such decision makers easy access to SD practitioners who, for reasonable fees, can build SD models. [Warning: Pet peeve coming here. If we ""cannot"" build a useful model, or at least useful initial models, for less than $1MM, we are doomed to fail. We need to hone our modeling skills to the point where we can create useful initial models at price points our clients are accustomed to pay for consulting help. I strongly believe that models built in a couple of hours -- such as the ones that Barry Richmond used to create for his ""Story of the Month"" -- can be very useful in helping people think about tough problems and gain insight into new ways of dealing with them. Such models may, or may not, lead to the creation of more elaborate SD models -- and I believe that's just fine.]

3. Then, teach these decision makers to interpret and understand SD modeling results well enough to be able to use such results in their decision making.

Of these, the hardest to do is the first -- and we have been trying to do it, with some success, for awhile. But what if we coupled our efforts with the second -- what if we walked into every tough decision situation (where we had an interest) with a simple ""Story of the Month"" model in hand, and helped people understand the systems at work? How far could we get if we did that?



John

John W. Gunkler, President, HPVS
Posted by ""John W. Gunkler"" <jwgunkler@hpvs.net> posting date Tue, 2 Jan 2007 10:14:15 -0500 _______________________________________________
""Kim Warren""
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Kim Warren"" »

Posted by ""Kim Warren"" <Kim@strategydynamics.com> Seems likely there may be much more going on in public policy than reaches the attention of the wider SD community - I find surprises pop out of unexpected corners when people get talking.

A number of problems about widening SD's influence seem to arise in the Business SIG:
- maintaining client confidentiality, or protecting the advantage they paid for
- not wanting others to steal our ideas, and then clients
- perhaps people are too modest about the work they do
- and then everyone is so busy too!
Could some of these factors be at work here too?

There doesn't seem much alternative but to 'publish, publish, publish' - and not to each other but to the wider world, emphasising the SD content. .. but it is pretty tough to keep that treadmill turning.

On one point, I feel a rethink is needed. Yes, the field has been ticking over for half a century, and yes, the time-constants have been pretty long. But the urgency of some things that need fixing means that waiting decades for something to happen is just not acceptable. We may have reinforcing feedback with current practitioners and activity bringing in new blood - but if the outflow of people losing interest exceeds this breeding rate I fear we sometimes go backwards [pretty sure that happened in business applications around 2001-02 when all the big consulting firms cut back].

So what puzzles me is why other great ideas do not have to wait so long for widespread uptake? In the business arena six-sigma, value-based management, balanced score-card and other ideas took off within a few years. So what did they and other successful concepts do that we have missed?

Kim Warren
Posted by ""Kim Warren"" <Kim@strategydynamics.com> posting date Tue, 2 Jan 2007 14:43:56 -0000 _______________________________________________
""Malczynski, Leonard A""
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Post by ""Malczynski, Leonard A"" »

Posted by ""Malczynski, Leonard A"" <lamalcz@sandia.gov> In the Journal of Economic Literature Vol. XXV March 1987, Robert Nelson, then of the US Department of the Interior wrote a paper titled, ""The Economics Profession and the Making of Public Policy"".

Here are some revealing excerpts,

""Most economists hope that their work will have an impact on public policy. Yet few economists devote much time or effort to studying the mechanisms by which economics writings and research are translated into public policy results.""

""fundamental concern long addressed ... the proper role of professional experts in the ... governing scheme.""

""Economists coming into direct contact with government decision making have found that they cannot limit their role to that of neutral technicians; to do so would be to make themselves irrelevant and ultimately excluded.""


Perhaps we might substitute 'system dynamics' for 'economics', etc.

I have low (1706 KB) and high (6323 KB) resolution pdf files of the article. Please contact me if you would like a copy.

NB: I am not posting this as fuel for the economics versus system dynamics debate!

Len Malczynski
Geosciences Center
Sandia National Laboratories - Host of the 2009 International Conference of the System Dynamics Society Albuquerque, NM 87123-1350 USA Posted by ""Malczynski, Leonard A"" <lamalcz@sandia.gov>
posting date Tue, 2 Jan 2007 09:08:01 -0700
_______________________________________________
""Jack Ring""
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Jack Ring"" »

Posted by ""Jack Ring"" <jring@amug.org>
As usual, Jack Homer has clarified the situation considerably. I wonder, though, about ""... all we can do is keep working hard and looking for the best opportunities...""
What if WE included SDS, the INCOSE, www.incose.org, the SDPS, www.sdpsnet.org, and ISSS, www.isss.org, then perhaps a greater effect could be generated. Could four ""professional societies"" really act to the benefit of their constituents?

On the other hand, we must be clear about the objective function that the system called Congress is pursuing. Too often scientists and others presume the objective function is somewhere near Liberty and Justice for All or even Peace. To the degree that our models and analyses get in the way of the pork barrel path to perpetual re-election such scientists are simply 'a horde of gnats' to be ignored and escaped.

Several years ago John N. Warfield designed the Interactive Management process with which variegated stakeholders could be brought to a condition of consensus about at least some aspects of their problematic situation.www.jnwarfield.com In one application Henry Alberts examined the DoD procurement process and gained resounding concurrence from Project Managers that several flaws in the process could and must be fixed. When the proposal got to Capitol Hill and Congressional staffers saw that it could interfere with pork barrel prerogatives it died a quick and silent demise.

Several months ago Sen. McCain lamented that a great number of bad buys had exploited holes in the McCain-Feingold bill. I wrote to inquire why so many holes had be installed in the bill in the first place and whether he would appreciate a systems review of future bills. No answer.

cheers,
Jack Ring
Posted by ""Jack Ring"" <jring@amug.org>
posting date Tue, 2 Jan 2007 21:12:19 -0700 _______________________________________________
""Jay W. Forrester""
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by ""Jay W. Forrester"" »

Posted by ""Jay W. Forrester"" <jforestr@MIT.EDU> There have been several recent messages lamenting the lack of government interest in system dynamics. The discussions seem to expect that we should engage ""policy makers.""

I believe that those in government are not the proper target. Instead we should be addressing the public with clarifying insights about the major problems of a country. Those in government need a supporting public.
This is especially true because the results of a penetrating system dynamics study will usually show that popular policies are the source of the problem and that the solutions lie in directly the opposite direction from what the public expects. Under those circumstances, no so-called ""policy maker"" can move in the opposite direction from that expected by the individual's constituents.

The field needs a series of penetrating, provocative, insightful books that address uppermost issues of public concern. These books must be addressed to the public and have the clarity and content that will attract newspaper debate (or these days it may be Internet debate). I believe that journal articles in the professional press will not reach the appropriate audiences.

To illustrate, let me recall some of the reactions to the books, ""World Dynamics"" and ""Urban Dynamics."" Both books became subjects for discussion in such forums as the League of Women Voters and parent-teacher groups.

A member of the House of Representatives from Iowa told me he decided to run for Congress because of ""World Dynamics."" He established in each precinct of his district a man and wife team to convene discussion groups about the future. Unfortunately he developed Lyme disease and resigned from Congress soon after. ""World Dynamics"" and the successor book, ""Limits to Growth,"" led to Congressional hearings on growth.

""Urban Dynamics"" attracted sufficient attention in Congress that several members of the House and the Senate wrote a joint letter to the Executive Department requesting that further modeling be supported.

So far as I know, the system dynamics field has not produced successor books
about major political issues that have had a similar public impact. Perhaps
the system dynamics field is focusing too much on itself and its academic audience and not enough on public issues for the public.

The lack of public issue books is not because there have been no important subjects for such books. The headlines and the political debates reveal many possible topics.

In the United States, Social Security and Social Security reform have been a subject of perennial political debate with little light shed on the subject.
It justifies a book to establish the basis for public debate. For example, we had presidential candidates promising to put a ""lock box"" around the Social Security surplus, oblivious to the fact the the ""box"" contains only government bonds that, when liquidated, require new borrowing. The lock box idea seems to have been accepted like the fable of the emperor without clothes. There is much to reveal and to clarify.

Likewise, government debt, its future, its effect on unequal income distribution, its effect on future standard of living, and its making the US vulnerable to the decisions of other countries could be a book in the center of political debate.

Another hot topic would be imbalance in foreign trade.

Another is the effect of outsourcing production to low-wage countries and the future effect on welfare, living standards, and political unrest.

As has already been pointed out in the emails, there is much system dynamics activity that for various reasons remains hidden. Often, unlike those in academia, those doing the interesting system dynamics work in business and government do not have incentives to publish. Often the work carries government or corporate secrecy classification. Several years ago I was invited to lunch by a system dynamicist in a large European company. As we sat down in the executive dining room, my host said, ""I am sorry, but I can not tell you anything about our system dynamics work.
We can go to professional meetings and discuss anything we are doing in operations research or economics, but are not allowed to even say that we are interested in system dynamics."" On a less restricted basis, several years ago, and I know nothing of the present, the Central Intelligence Agency taught internal courses in system dynamics and had both classified and unclassified system dynamics models of the economic, social, and political dynamics of various countries. When I was asked to address the staff of the CIA, the lecture was attended by some 400 people from the director on down.

As others have said, our problem is the shortage of very advanced and skilled practitioners of system dynamics who are willing to carry system dynamics into the public policy debate, not among ""policy makers,"" but into the general public from which it will seep into governments.

--
---------------------------------------------------------
Jay W. Forrester
Professor of Management
Sloan School
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room E60-156
Cambridge, MA 02139
Posted by ""Jay W. Forrester"" <jforestr@MIT.EDU> posting date Tue, 2 Jan 2007 21:43:20 -0500 _______________________________________________
George A Simpson
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QUERY SD Impact on National Government Policies

Post by George A Simpson »

Posted by George A Simpson <gsimpso4@csc.com> I'd like to respond to Kim's point: ""..what puzzles me is why other great ideas do not have to wait so long for widespread uptake?""

I think the answer has several parts.

First, SD and for example six-sigma are not comparable because they operate at different levels of abstraction. Six-sigma is a reasonably tangible concept that when applied, promises straight-line business
results. SD is a methodology, a language, and a very general one at
that. It's almost like comparing takeup of a business application like
Excel to that of a language like SmallTalk or Dylan. There is about a
factor of 10 difference between these rates.

Second, and related, takeup of languages is often directly related to the number of applications available in the language. SD does not have a significant opus of applications suitable for general use. This is a chicken-and-egg situation, with progress retarded by factors Kim has mentioned (commercial interest).

Third, SD is more than just a language, it is a worldview. To embrace it, you have to be willing to revise your patterns of thinking, and see the world differently. The closest thing I could compare it to is object orientation in programming, which took a decade or two to become
mainstream. O-O was driven forward because of the practical commercial
benefits that it offered in taming program complexity, particularly in the user interface domain. User interfaces of course were of tremendous importance to the business of reshaping computer interfaces, and this
drove O-O into the mainstream. Perhaps there is a similar potential
arising for SD, albeit more slowly, in the rising environmental awareness of today.

..george...

Dr. George Simpson, Principal Consultant, CSC Posted by George A Simpson <gsimpso4@csc.com> posting date Fri, 5 Jan 2007 07:16:24 +0000 _______________________________________________
""John Gunkler""
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Post by ""John Gunkler"" »

Posted by ""John Gunkler"" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com> Kim Warren asks (re: Six Sigma, balanced scorecard, etc.): What did they do that we missed?

My previous posting, I think, begins to answer -- to wit, some of them (such as balanced scorecard, Lean enterprise, and value-based mgmt) were ""simplifiable"" (easy for ""lay"" people to believe they understood), and others (Six Sigma) while not simplifiable had easy-to-understand strong positive consequences.

I don't presume to know what has happened with every use of SD in business because, as Dr. Warren mentions, businesses have reasons to be somewhat close-mouthed about that -- but there are very few dramatic ""positive consequences"" cases that I'm aware of -- at least none on the scale of the success which caused GE to trumpet the use of Six Sigma. And what successes have been achieved are not publicized like GE's Jack Welch did. (Few things
are.)

Three of the things that made Jack Welch's message about Six Sigma so effective were (1) Jack Welch was saying it at a time when he was considered the ""genius"" of American business; (2) he had hard evidence of success to point to (primarily in GE and Allied Signal, but also in other companies); and (3) the methodology behind the success was plausibly seen as causing the success (arising as it did out of the work of Deming and Juran in Japan, where one business after another was kicking our American butts.)

So, obviously (grin) ...

1. We need someone like GE's Jack Welch -- someone with clout in the larger community -- to continually bang the drum (to change musical metaphors a
bit) for SD. [Fat chance we can create this without a huge dose of luck.] 2. We need to make more of the successes we achieve.
3. We need to make SD simplifiable (as I wrote earlier). [I believe we did some work on this listserv a couple of years ago on the SD ""elevator speech""
-- but did not actually create one that was effective. I know that I haven't come up with one that works very well yet.]

What I'm saying, I suppose, is that creating an easy-to-understand explanation of the benefits of using SD is a non-trivial exercise that we ought to engage in (again). And we ought not think that we're going to succeed without putting in some serious effort and time.


John
Posted by ""John Gunkler"" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com> posting date Thu, 4 Jan 2007 15:34:59 -0500 _______________________________________________
""Jim Thompson""
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Post by ""Jim Thompson"" »

Posted by ""Jim Thompson"" <james.thompson@strath.ac.uk> Kim Warren asks: ""So what puzzles me is why other great ideas do not have to wait so long for widespread uptake?""

It seems (a) those are pretty easy to understand by someone with elementary reading and arithmetic skills, and (b) their application produces a nearly instantaneous result, however undesirable in the long run. To compare SD to another discipline, it might be closer to econometrics than the intervention tools Kim suggests.

>From my experience, the National Model building exercise at Sloan in
the 1970s and 1980s was most persuasive. Our Sponsors Group exchanged war stories and debated ideas as they were developed. We hired a lot of bright graduate students for consulting and for long-term positions.
It would be wonderful to construct such an environment again -- one in which the research is the focus.

Jim
Posted by ""Jim Thompson"" <james.thompson@strath.ac.uk> posting date Thu, 4 Jan 2007 16:39:12 -0500 _______________________________________________
Locked