Rapid Response to Decision Making for Complex Issues - How Technologies of Cooperation Can Help

Abstract

REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGEForm Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing this collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington, VA 22202-4302, and The nature of decision making reveals many distinguishing features of organizations, from biological organisms to corporate enterprises. Embodied in the process of decision making are assumptions about relationships, value, communication, and resources, as well as infrastructure to implement these assumptions. Most importantly, decisionmaking processes reflect how organizations reconcile control and creative freedom -a tension that produces innovation and evolution. A new capacity for rapid, ad hoc, and distributed decision making is emerging from the intersection of technologies of cooperation and new knowledge about the nature of cooperation and cooperative strategies. This report investigates the challenges, strategies, technologies, and best practices that will shape this new capacity. NUMBER OF PAGES 14. SUBJECT TERMS Executive SummaryA new capacity for rapid, ad hoc, and distributed decision making is emerging from the intersection of technologies of cooperation and new knowledge about the nature of cooperation and cooperative strategies. This report investigates the challenges, strategies, technologies, and best practices that will shape this new capacity.Figure E-1 summarizes our findings. Around the outside of the mandala are the challenges to rapid decision making. The inner circles represent the four strategic domains for addressing these challenges. For each domain we describe strategic actions (the boxes) that decision makers can take to improve their decision-making processes. Executive Summary CHALLENGESThe challenges arise particularly when decision makers are engaged with complex issues involving multiple stakeholders, unanticipated events, ad hoc structures or groups, and uncertain or unstable environments. Among the key challenges that practitioners report are:• Overcoming poor infrastructures STRATEGIESFour main strategic domains emerge from the analysis of these challenges in the context of technologies of cooperation and cooperative strategy:• Develop both stocks and flows of information. Among the strategic imperatives here are making a multiple "thin slices," activating network links with experts and specialists to open up flows; liberating tacit knowledge into network stocks; developing rapid feedback mechanisms from local sources; linking top-down and bottom-up information flows; developing hybrid technology ecologies; and removing constraints on "knowledge bandwid...

Three Dimensional Volunteered Geographic Information

“…Volunteers collaborate to create an online map of the world that is free and open to all. OpenStreetMap provides a good example of all the Web and GeoWeb 2.0 technologies of collaboration outlined by Saveri (et al 2005), i.e. knowledge collective, peer production network, community computing grids, social mobile computing, group-forming network and social accounting.…”

chapter 14 Evidence and Decision Making in Education Systems

“…Finally, the Institute for the Future has established a research group (see http://www.iftf.org/research/technology_cooperation_reports.html) that focuses on the technologies of cooperation and the characteristics of successful organizations. The recommendations made in the group’s most recent report, Rapid Decision Making for Complex Issues (Saveri & Rheingold, 2005, pp. 39–40), address many of the issues confronting educational organizations as they struggle with moving from data use as a compliance‐and‐reporting issue to one of decision making under pressure.…”

Evidence and Decision Making in Education Systems

“…The research literature on business and IT system design provides some guidance about what has and has not worked to enhance local decision making capacity in the private sector, as well as in other segments of the public sector (Bhatt & Zaveri, 2001;Eden & Ackermann, 1998;Elmore, Holloway, & Workman, 2006;Fazlollahi & Vahidov, 2001). The issue of extracting value from the huge (and growing) mass of data schools and districts collect is mirrored in other industries (Rothfelder, 2006). The topic in general is called "information governance" in the trade press; many different entities require data to meet their individual reporting requirements.…”