Transcript

Learning outcomes

• Explain how Global Systems Science integrates policy, complex systems science, policy informatics and citizen engagement
• Identify a policy challenge and explain how the science of complex systems can inform policy makers addressing that challenge
• Explain how policy informatics can be applied to policy problems
• Suggest ways of encouraging citizen engagement in the policy making process
• Identify classes of people involved in policy making
• Identify how multidisciplinary teams collaborate to find solutions to complex policy problems
• Experience participating in crowd-sourced data collection
• Explain that policy options must be 'satisficed' rather than 'optimised'.

Syllabus

Global systems science has four main elements:

• Policy problems at local and global scales
• The transdisciplinary science of complex systems
• Policy informatics
• Citizen engagement

The course addresses the question of how policy makers can be confident that proposed policies will have the intended desirable outcomes and not have undesirable unintended consequences. Social systems have multilevel dynamics and policies interact at all levels, from local to global. Complex systems science can help to formulate and design policies, and to investigate and evaluate their possible outcomes. It does this through policy informatics, which makes its transdisciplinary theory operational through computer-based tools and new data sources enabled by information and communication technologies. These tools include computer simulation, visualisation and analytics for integrating large heterogeneous data sources. Citizen engagement is a key feature of Global Systems Science to address the local and global instabilities that can arise when citizens are distant from the policy process. While science cannot provide solutions to all problems, Global Systems Science provides ways for citizens, policy makers and scientists to work together to address the increasingly complex problems of the modern world.