SIMULATION-BASED LEARNING FOR PUBLIC POLICY

By Daniel Silva, CSP

IMAGINE a world where the explorative aspect of solving global challenges, anticipating outcomes, evaluating scenarios, and mitigating risk is available through the form of a game. That imagination takes us to the world of gaming and simulation.

Public Policy simulations also called sims are being developed by the Serious Games industry to assist governments in making intelligent decisions, scenario planning, and risk mitigation to ensure effective program outcomes. These simulations are included in workshops and invite participants to role-play scenarios to better understand future impacts and to make decisions about plausible Futures in a controlled, risk-free environment - players can repurpose and reallocate resources, whether funding, technology, physical infrastructure, or personnel. It offers the future-proofing of issues while testing the strengths and weaknesses of policy or strategy. The Global market size of simulation-based learning for the public sector will reach $12 billion by 2027.

Imagine a billion-dollar program with defined outcomes evaluated through scenarios before a single dollar is spent. These simulations are designed not only as an experiential educational tool for addressing public policy issues but also include important contemporary issues such as migration, sustainability, cap and trade, housing policy and equity, and managing public health emergencies. Through player-selected roles such as the prime minister, finance minister, international organization representative and others, users foster a better understanding of the responsibility, constraints, and challenges in achieving consensus in their roles. Built using real-world data, these sims allow practitioners in both the public sector, non-profits as well as students of public policy to visualize the result of their decisions and to hone skills such as leadership, negotiation, teamwork, and crisis management.

The simulations are developed in collaboration with universities that have a specialized public policy, affairs, and administration programs. Their faculty and students review the simulations and provide design and upgrade recommendations to allow the sims to meet the needs of an actual or aspiring public policy practitioner.

How do they work?

The simulations place teams of five participants through role play in charge of their country’s decision-making and policy development. One of the simulations focuses on Pandemic Management. It allows users to evaluate public health policies against economic impacts associated with the spread of a deadly infectious disease in their region. Sound familiar? Participants through their respective roles are tasked with managing the public health of their population, against the economic impact as well as the effects of their decisions on public opinion. They are faced with policy decisions on the distribution of test kits, and vaccines as well as determining who among their population should receive it first. They evaluate economic stabilization options such as stimulus, appropriate timing of messaging to their citizens on when to declare a state of emergency and other impacts such as border restrictions and mitigation measures to control the spread within their country. The sim is designed for economies of countries to be interconnected, so a decision in one country affects the rest. It tests participants’ ability to handle social dilemmas in stressful circumstances and puts participants in the actor’s role of leadership. The simulation is run using a countdown clock, with data on the spread of the disease updating regularly. This creates pressure and provides a space for practice in crisis management and group decision-making as well as conciliatory compromise.

The simulation allows participants to view statistics such as positive cases, deaths, vaccine stock management, budget, hospital capacity, and the result of popular opinion on government policies. The deterministic system dynamics model on which the game runs includes effects such as public resistance to mitigation measures and cross-border impacts. Instructors can set the simulation to different time periods in predetermined timeframes. The impact of relations with neighbouring countries as well as the impact of their decisions against the mortality rate is built in.

Simulation-based learning platforms for public policy continue to have extensive development updates.

Those sims allow governments dealing with disruption or strategic planning to maintain a dual focus, managing existing operations on the one hand while exploring ways to improve future responses. A focus on human-centric decision-making against machine learning-generated scenarios and enhanced data visualization are part of the next round of updates.

Among other simulations offered include Host Nations that focus on international negotiation, leadership, consensus building, trade-offs, long-term impacts of immigration policy, asylum/refugee policy and economic policies.

Metropolitan Cities is another simulation that focuses on multi-party negotiation, distributive and integrative issues, municipal-level transit policy, sustainable planning, housing affordability/gentrification, and public-private partnerships. Other topics being developed include Housing Policy and Equity, Sustainable Energy Simulation, Cap and Trade, Anticorruption and Transparency, Arms control and Proliferation, Ocean and Polar Affairs, Cybersecurity among others.

You can find more details at: www.dms.academy DMS Academy – Governance Foresight Program, Public Policy Simulations