One of the ever-present challenges for organizations and policymakers in achieving desired outcomes is knowing what structures and processes will support and produce them. Well- intentioned approaches often fail to achieve desired ends, and worse, produce unintended consequences that may even run counter to what is desired.

Agent Based Modeling is a modeling and simulation tool that is well suited to help bridge the gap between intentions and outcomes in complex human systems. By drawing explicit attention to the way an organizational or policy change can affect both components and their interactions, non-obvious consequences that follow can be discovered and highlighted. As organizations and policymakers seek to address perceived inefficiencies and poor results, ABM should be leveraged as part of an active design process.

Organizations must evolve.

This often ignored maxim is more critical than ever in today’s complex environment. In this piece, we explore the differences between centralized and decentralized organizations, and offer recommendations for enabling decentralized processes that enhance an organization’s ability to grapple with complexity, ultimately positioning them not only to survive, but thrive.

As demonstrated by recently introduced legislation and FY19 budget markups, Washington is awakening to the need for policy to address the transformational potential of emerging technologies including Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Autonomous Systems. However, formulating precise policy is made difficult by the uncertainty that surrounds these technologies and the effects they will bring.

How can we set policy conditions that effectively mitigate risk while simultaneously catalyzing innovation and leveraging opportunities that emerging technologies afford?

This report proposes a two-layered strategy for innovating under uncertainty: Active Design at the project level and Evolutionary Innovation at the acquisition-system level. This strategy is designed to maximize the opportunity for novel innovation while minimizing the cost of inevitable failures.

Finally, recommendations are made for setting policy conditions that can enable this strategy.

War, failing infrastructure, sickness and disease. How can we make policy that better grapples with today’s problems? The increasingly dynamic and uncertain environment has made it extremely difficult for current policy making processes to achieve desired outcomes. Failures in policy can be devastatingly costly, both monetarily and in terms of human life and wellbeing. In order to rectify this, the policy making process must be structured to be responsive and adaptive—policy design must become active. This goal can be achieved through policy design that is deliberately iterative and subject to continuous refinement. Each iterative cycle should be supported by a sequence of phases that moves policy towards achieving desired objectives and minimizes unintended consequences.

The evolution and proliferation of information technologies has fundamentally changed the information environment and disrupted our decision and policy making processes. The environment has shifted from one in which information was relatively scarce and costly to one in which it is dense, ubiquitous, and cheap. With the rise of the internet and social media, the negligible costs to produce, transmit, broadcast, and consume information has upset established power structures. The challenge for decision and policy makers has gone from gaining access to information, to distilling large amounts of data down to relevant and actionable insights. While this new environment presents novel opportunities, it also creates a number of challenges including hindering policymaking, impeding effective governance, opening new domains for warfare, and introducing systemic vulnerabilities.

The changing nature and increasing complexity of the global environment have strained our legacy policymaking apparatuses to the point of dysfunction. The U.S. is in need of structural and procedural reforms to thrive in the current global environment. This report highlights two challenges to effective foreign policymaking that demand reform and offers initial pathways to overcoming them.

Military “readiness” is frequently used as a bottom line metric for evaluating the return on investment for defense spending. This report explores the relationship between the state of military healthcare and readiness. The report found that the conventional definition of readiness has been limited to budgets, equipment, and end strengths, and ignores the essential human component. Increasing healthcare costs and a prevalence of mental illness significantly strain the force. An alternative approach to military healthcare and wellness is necessary, one that can be personalized and scaled to meet the full complexity of the issues facing our military community.