Intelligibility and Transparency in Model-based Collaborative Governance

Governments are currently confronting major challenges such as financial, economic and spending crises, impending resource shortages, migratory pressures and climate change. At the same time, policymakers are required to be more inclusive and to co-create policy with stakeholders. Policies must address the complexity of a situation in a holistic way, rather than propose solutions to single problems. Therefore, formulating and understanding the situation and its complex dynamics is key in finding holistic solutions. This indicates a systems approach to policy analysis that is integrative and inter-subjective. There is a need to develop robust, intuitive decision support tools that provide an environment for model-based collaborative governance. These tools should enable multiple policy actors to: (i) build and share a mental model of the problem under analysis; (ii) design policy options, each structured as a particular combination of various types of policy instruments, and assess the likely impacts of a policy option in terms of the economic, financial, social, environmental and other impacts; and (iii) conduct an in-depth evaluation of competing policy options, taking into account the preferences of policymakers and stakeholder groups. A new policy-oriented quantitative problem structuring method that is facilitated by decision support system (DSS) technologies is a novel research opportunity that was explored in the SENSE4US research project, which designed and demonstrated systems modelling, simulation and decision analysis tools for prescriptive policy analysis. This paper reports on the results of that research project and provides a reflection on the contributions of this research to theory and practice and what areas further research can take place in the future.