Article by Stefaan G. Verhulst: “We live at a moment of perhaps unprecedented global upheaval. From climate change to pandemics, from war to political disharmony, misinformation, and growing social inequality, policy and social change-makers today face not only new challenges but new types of challenges. In our increasingly complex and interconnected world, existing systems and institutions of governance, marked by hierarchical decision-making, are increasingly being replaced by overlapping nodes of multi-sector decision-making.
Data is proving critical to these new forms of decision-making, along with associated (and emerging) phenomena such as advanced analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Yet while the importance of data intelligence for policymakers is now widely recognized, there remain multiple challenges to operationalizing that insight–i.e., to move from data intelligence to decision intelligence.
In what follows, we explain what we mean by decision intelligence, and discuss why it matters. We then present six obstacles to better decision intelligence–challenges that prevent policymakers and others from translating insights into action. Finally, we end by offering one possible solution to these challenges: the concept of decision accelerator labs, operating on a hub and spoke model, and offering an innovative, interdisciplinary platform to facilitate the development of evidence-based, targeted solutions to public problems and dilemmas…(More)”.