Millennium Project
Updating the Global Challenges Facing Humanity
9. Capacity to Decide
How can the capacity to decide be improved as the nature of work and institutions change?

This is the short description of the challenge as appears in the print version of the 2008 State of the Future report. The more complete version of this challenge along with actions to address it, graphs, and indicators to measure change is available on the CD-ROM included with the report. Please add your suggestions in the space provided after each paragraph and feel free to contact us with any questions.

We look forward to including your views.

Although no attributions will be made, for demographic analysis and so that you can be listed properly as participant in the next State of the Future, and so that a copy can be sent to you, please fill in the information below:

Name:
Title:
Organization:
My primary employment is in:
Government International Organization Corporation (Business) NGO University Independent Consultant Other

If other, please specify:
Address:
Country
Male Female

E-mail address:


General Description
Many of the world’s decisionmaking processes are inefficient, slow, and ill informed, especially when considering the new demands of increasing complexity, globalization, and the acceleration of change. More-open systems, democratization, and interactive media are involving more people in decisionmaking, which further increases complexity—making continuous modifications of decisions more likely than achieving closure. Fortunately, the world is moving toward ubiquitous computing with collective intelligence for just-in-time knowledge to inform decisions; unfortunately, decisionmaking culture can be slow to change.

Decision support software that lets people see how issues have alternative positions and how each is supported or refuted by research has existed for years but is rarely used. Such issues-based information software can make decisionmaking more clear and transparent (see Figure 23 in Chapter 5). Rapid collection and assessment of many judgments via on-line software can support timelier decision-making (see Chapter 3). Judgmental information was most often the view of single individuals or very small groups, but now decisionmaking benefits from the increasing use of open systems that invite broad and transparent participation of groups of experts and individuals from around the world.

Vast peer-reviewed data banks are being interconnected so that composites of data from many sources can present the best facts available for a given decision. Issue-tracking for decisionmaking is improving with Web 2.0 tools. More user-friendly, powerful, and flexible simulation and modeling software will eventually find its way into decisionmaking, as have spreadsheet software and search engines. Advances in cognitive neuroscience and brain-computer interface technologies should improve decision-support systems.

Please suggest edits to this paragraph:


Approaches to address this challenge

If Moore’s Law continues, within 25 years individual computers will have the processing power of the human brain; hence, much decisionmaking can be automated, just as the autonomous nervous system manages basic bodily decisions. Meanwhile, too much time is wasted going through useless information. The number and intricacy of choices seem to be growing beyond our abilities to analyze and make decisions. Ubiquitous computing will increase the number of decisions per day, constantly changing schedules and priorities. Decisionmaking will be increasingly augmented by the integration of sensors imbedded in products, in buildings, and in living bodies with a more intelligent Web and institutional and personal collective intelligence software that helps us receive and respond to feedback for improving decisions.

Self-organization of volunteers around the world via Web sites is increasing transparency and creating new forms of decisionmaking. Today’s challenges cannot be addressed by governments, corporations, NGOs, universities, and intergovernmental bodies acting alone; hence, transinstitutional decisionmaking has to be developed and common platforms created for transinstitutional strategic decisionmaking and implementation.

Training programs for decisionmakers should bring together research on why irrational decisions are made, lessons of history, futures research methods, forecasting, cognitive science, prediction markets, data reliability, utilization of statistics, conventional decision support methods (e.g., PERT, cost/benefit, etc.), collective intelligence systems, ethical considerations, goal seeking, risk, the role of leadership, transparency, accountability, and participatory decisionmaking with new decision support software, e-government, ways to identify and better an organization’s improvement system, prioritization processes, and collaborative decisionmaking with different institutions.

Challenge 9 will be addressed seriously when the State of the Future Index or similar systems are used regularly in decisionmaking, when national corporate law is modified to recognize transinstitutional organizations, and when at least 50 countries require elected officials to be trained in decisionmaking.

Please suggest other actions to address this challenge or edits to the ones above:

Regional Considerations

Africa: Microsoft is collaborating to help e-government systems to improve transparency and decisionmaking and to reduce corruption. Cape Verde’s e-government includes e-voting, which tallies votes within minutes of poll closings, which avoids conflicts about results. A recent mining boom in Africa will not benefit the local population unless the investment is accompanied with good governance. How can the cultural advantages of extended families be kept while making political and economic decisions more objective and less corrupt? The New Partnership for Africa’s Development has begun improving collaborative decisionmaking. African civil society needs development to pressure for freedom of the press, accountability, and transparency of government. If the brain drain cannot be reversed, expatriates should be connected to the development processes back home through Internet systems. Informal decentralized networks of allied political groups within and across boarders are becoming tremendously empowered by mobile communication devices and online social networking sites.

Please suggest edits concerning Africa:

Asia and Oceania: Synergies of Asian spirituality and collectivist culture with more linear, continuous, and individualistic western decisionmaking systems could produce new decisionmaking philosophies. South Korea is exploring collective intelligence capabilities.

Please suggest edits concerning Asia and Oceania:

Europe: As of May 2008, there were 2,379 multilateral treaties and agreements affecting decisionmaking around the world; Europe is a major contributor to these, which is leading to “reporting fatigue.” Bureaucratic complexity, lack of transparency, and proliferation of decision heads threatens clear decisionmaking in the EU. Tensions between the EU and its member governments and among ethnic groups are making decisionmaking difficult. A global observatory and advanced information technology may facilitate public participation in direct democracy.

Please suggest edits concerning Europe:

Latin America: Data for decisionmaking are weak in the region due to lack of capacity. In addition to improved efficiency and transparency, the modernization of state decisionmaking requires the design of new agencies and functions to attend to new aims of the political policies, with increasing civil control. Latin America has to improve political educational awareness and the involvement of the people and to reduce corruption.

Please suggest edits concerning Latin America:

North America: The region’s dependence on computer-augmented decisionmaking—from e-government to tele-business—creates new vulnerabilities to manipulation by organized crime, corruption, and cyber-terrorism, as discussed in Challenges 6 and 12. Self-organizing groups on the Internet are becoming de facto decisionmakers in the region, with decisions made at the lowest level appropriate to the problem.

Please suggest edits concerning North America:

Graph: Number of international organizations (NGOs and IGOs)

Source:Union of International Associations Year Book with Millennium Project estimates

If you want to suggest a better graphic representation for this challenge, please indicate the source(s) of data:

Additional Comments
Please suggest any additional comments concerning this challenge:

Thank you for your participation. The results will be sent to you in the next State of the Future.



Survey conducted by the Millennium Project of the WFUNA