Tackling wicked problems
With Connecting the Dots we're looking at new approaches to the management of 'wicked problems'. These are problems that are unbounded in scope, time and resources; the problems can never be solved definitively, but rather can only be managed better or worse. Wicked problems also involve a highly complex interplay between causal factors; a tangled web of feedback loops and interdependencies to grapple with. What's more, wicked problems spill across departmental and agency remits.
Clearly, all this presents policy-makers with some pretty daunting challenges. Given the complexity and unbounded nature of wicked problems, taking the big picture is essential; focus narrowly on only one aspect of the problem, and unforeseen consequences are likely to crop up elsewhere, with the wider problem still unresolved.
Demos has in the past argued for a 'holistic' or 'joined up' government approach to wicked problems, in pamphlets such as Holistic Government and Systems Failure. With wicked problems, dividing the problem up between silo'd departments is an inadequate response.
Many politicians and policy-makers understand the value of holistic government approaches to wicked problems, yet so far reforms in this direction have been sporadic. However, the Australia Public Services Commission has been particularly alert to the complexities of wicked problems, and receptive to innovative problem solving approaches to them.
Their 2007 paper, 'Tackling Wicked Problems: A Public Policy Paper' is a compelling and clear argument in favour of cross-departmental collaboration in the management of wicked problems. Sections 5 and 6, on the institutional difficulties to establishing holistic government, are particularly good food for thought.
With Connecting the Dots, we want to see how this general approach can be developed further. We'll be focusing on three case-studies of wicked problems; local violent crime, international drug trafficking, and climate security. We want to bring out in-depth the 'wickedness' of these problems, to argue for holistic government in the management of wicked problems, and to discuss what meeting this ambition would mean on the ground in our three case-study policy areas.
One idea that we envisage will be central to Connecting the Dots, and which is not discussed in detail in the APS paper, is that of leverage. Leverage points are places to intervene in a system, in which small changes can have large effects. The complexities of wicked problems provide opportunities to policy-makers as well as challenges; the feedback loops and interdependencies between causal factors can be exploited to effect large-scale changes in a system. Change one aspect of the system and you might, given the web of interconnections, set off a chain (or even a loop) of system-wide changes.
What’s keeping us awake at night, then, is how to identify leverage points in our three case-study problems, and how these leverage points could be exploited…