The world is moving toward ubiquitous computing with collective intelligence for just-in-time knowledge to inform decisions. 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. 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.
Meanwhile, too much time is wasted going through useless information. Ubiquitous computing will increase the number of decisions per day, constantly changing schedules and priorities. This will require new software to manage such decisions. If Moore’s Law continues over the next 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, the sheer number and intricacy of choices seem to be growing beyond our abilities to analyze and make decisions. Open systems, democratization, and interactive media are involving more people in decisionmaking, which increases complexity—making continuous modifications of decisions more likely than achieving closure. As decision-making becomes more complex, it may appear chaotic until new systems emerge.
The amount of data is exploding—sensors imbedded in products, in buildings, and in living bodies, and with more data from transactions, communications, security, and diagnostics. Future forms of analysis and simulations will use these data to provide insight into correlations in fields as diverse as social behavior, epidemiology, and nanobiology. More user-friendly, powerful, and flexible simulation and modeling software will eventually find its way into decisionmaking, as have spreadsheet software and search engines.
Decisionmaking will be increasingly augmented by the integration of ubiquitous sensors, a more intelligent Web, and institutional and personal intelligence software that helps us receive and respond to feedback for improving decisions. Such future capacities might help identify attractors of responsible decisionmaking and network them for improved decisions. One new example is the Real Time Delphi that provides decisionmakers with rapid access to an ongoing synthesis of experts’ judgments enabling rapid response to feedback. Self-organization of volunteers around the world via Web sites is another new strategy to increase transparency and expand participation in decision processes.
However, these and e-government systems that are automating administrivia and also improving decisionmaking create new vulnerabilities to manipulation by organized crime, corruption, and cyber-terrorism. To counter the annual $1 trillion in bribes affecting political decisionmaking, the Parties to the UN Convention against Corruption have begun implementing procedures to prevent and criminalize corruption. Media attention to the World Bank’s new comparative measures of governance and Transparency International’s corruption index should pressure governments to improve. Although UN organizations are the only trusted decisionmaking system for many people around the world, they were designed for decision-making among governments. 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. Foresight and environmental scanning draws attention to future opportunities, too often missed today.
Decisionmakers training programs should bring together research on why irrational decisions are made, lessons of history, futures research methods, forecasting of intended and unintended consequences, insights from cognitive science, data reliability, utilization of statistics, conventional decision support methods (e.g., cost/benefit, PERT, etc.), ethical considerations, goal seeking, risk, the role of leadership, transparency, accountability, and participatory decisionmaking. It should also include the current state of e-government, ways to identify and better an organization’s improvement system, and decision-support software, including knowledge visualization, prioritization processes, and collaborative decisionmaking with different institutions. Just as efficiency is a key criterion in decisionmaking in industrial economies, wisdom based on global ethics will be a criterion in decision-making in successful knowledge economies, along with an emphasis on partnership and participation between decisionmakers and stakeholders.
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.