What Policy Work is Needed in a VUCA World?

The problem: A VUCA world cannot be met with business-as-usual responses.

Why it matters: Societies must quickly adapt to changing conditions. Smarter policy leadership is vital.

The solution: Get better at triaging policy problems, assembling evidence of what works, creating decision dashboards, and anticipating future challenges.

A longer version of this article co-authored with Ruby O’Connor appeared in Global Policy and can be read here.

Global integration of manufacturing and trade has led most countries to have economic systems that can be disrupted by distant events and chain reactions. Climate change is starting to have unprecedented impacts. And, since Covid-19 emerged, we all know the speed with which a virus can spread, bringing illness, death, and massive social and economic disruption. A growing bandwagon of commentators declare our collective existence is subject to volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Welcome to the VUCA world.

Since populations look to governments for support when crises strike, policy professionals need to ask: If volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are increasing, what aspects of policy coordination and development should change?

Building on Existing Capabilities

Some commentators suggest adequate responses will require big changes in how societies and political systems operate. But many aspects of contemporary policymaking lend themselves to promoting stability in a VUCA world. With appropriate adjustments, elements of traditional policymaking will serve governments well in the future.

Harnessing New Technology

When Covid-19 struck, some governments were better placed than others to respond. Those with effective systems of population health, public order, and public communication did well. The most effective assembled advisory teams of medical experts, epidemiologists, and policy specialists who could rapidly interpret new information and translate it into appropriate policy responses.

Early in the pandemic, disease tracking platforms drew on existing networks to gather, analyse, and share relevant data about where the virus was spreading, the number of reported cases, and the number of fatalities attributed to it. As these platforms started reporting their close-to-real-time findings, other initiatives began tracking policy choices being made by governments in response to the pandemic. Researchers and analysts located anywhere around the world could draw connections between what was happening on the ground with the spread of the virus, and the apparent efficacy or lack of efficacy of related public policy initiatives.

By using publicly available information, and publishing daily updates on case numbers, some governments were able to provide convincing narratives about why certain policies were being implemented. These actions show how governments can enhance their analytical capabilities and gain more public trust.

Recently, various initiatives around the world have seen the development of repositories of information about the policy choices of governments and their resulting impacts. These ‘what works’ initiatives increase the potential for governments to learn from the experiences of their peers and quickly narrow down options to explore in the face of emerging challenges.

Much room remains for improvements in how relevant information is gathered, analysed, and presented. Technology, ranging from now familiar forms of information sharing online, to more novel applications of data science and Artificial Intelligence, will play a key role in these improvements.

The challenge is to enable analysts to rapidly assemble custom-made dashboards that can guide effective decision-making from case to case. Knowing what evidence needs to be pulled together into any specific dashboard will call on a combination of human expertise and modelling methods. Pursuing analytical procedures in this way will improve the quality of policymaking both for times of crisis and for the on-going refinement and delivery of established government services.

Building Better Long-Term Planning

Long-term planning has always been understood as an important part of the work of governments. Land use, urban design, infrastructure management, and the development of appropriate defence capabilities all call for long-term planning. But long-term planning is not given extensive attention or resources within most government entities charged with policy coordination and development.

One way to promote such policy work involves learning from wargaming, scenario planning, and pandemic preparedness. This is where insights from design thinking – with its focus on empathetic understanding of citizens and the routine challenges they face – could prove helpful. More work of this kind could benefit governments as they face the challenges of a VUCA world. The focus must be on policy actions to build resilience in society by appropriately adapting to changing conditions.

Summary

The VUCA world calls for evolution in policy coordination and development. Policy leaders should:

• Become adept at policy triage through better evidence-based practice, informed by the growing body of information on what policy responses work well in specific contexts.

• Improve data collection and analysis capabilities, supported by artificial intelligence, so emerging challenges can be quickly mitigated.

• Strengthen long-term scenario planning, where lessons from the past are integrated into preparedness plans.