The Systems Approach and Public Policy
ResearchPublished 1969
Prerequisites to the entrance of scientists and scientific methods into governmental policymaking. The systems approach — including systems analysis, operations research, management science, and systems engineering — is a practical philosophy for executing decision-oriented interdisciplinary research, based on quantitative models of a total problem. This approach has successfully aided decisionmaking in commerce, industry, and defense — fields with specific, limited problems and goals, centralized authority, and an underlying design amenable to modeling. However, to be useful in government, the systems approach needs certain reforms. (1) [Analysts] must accept as a model any device for predicting and comparing the outcomes of alternative actions — e.g., Delphi, an iterative procedure, based on questionnaires, for eliciting and refining group opinions. (2) They must adapt the systems approach to decentralized authority and political considerations. (3) [Public officials] must integrate this approach into the policymaking system, for automatic serious consideration of its recommendations. (4) They must support analysis with interdisciplinary research.
Document Details
- Copyright: RAND Corporation
- Availability: Available
- Year: 1969
- Print Format: Paperback
- Paperback Pages: 29
- Paperback Price: $20.00
- Document Number: P-4053
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Quade, E. S., The Systems Approach and Public Policy, RAND Corporation, P-4053, 1969. As of September 11, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4053.html
Quade, E. S., The Systems Approach and Public Policy. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1969. https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4053.html. Also available in print form.
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