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Public policy is a way for policy makers to manage the development of a country. It is ideally to attain prosperity for its citizens and government. But unfortunately, many public policies that are created do not achieve their goals. This is because (1) the problem mapping is not done well, so the public policy is made incorrectly (2) the process is disturbed by other factors, such as political issues (3) the implementation of public policy is misinterpreted by the authorized institution (4) the monitoring to make sure that the public policy has run properly is not good, so that the deviation of public policy implementation is not detected from the beginning. In the simple way, all those reasons are because of the complexity of the system surrounding the problem which is not considered at the beginning. Azar (2012) suggests System Dynamics for solving problem in the complex system. System Dynamics can help to simulate some scenarios of problems in the complex system and its possible solution. This technique can save cost and time for finding optimized solution. Some papers show the contribution of System Dynamics for policymaking (Guma et al., 2018; Gholizad et al., 2017; Bhushan, 2017; Oyo and Kalema, 2016; Bajracharya, 2016). The key element of System Dynamics is to identify the model of the system. Big Data is able to help in creating the model. Some other papers show the contribution of Big Data in System Dynamics (Pruyt, 2016; Nasution et al., 2017a; Hassanien et al., 2015). For certain cases, the manipulation or reduction of Big Data is needed before processing it (Azar and Hassanien, 2014).
Nasution et al. (2017b) suggests not only System Dynamics but also Big Data for public policymaking (PP). In generic, it can be seen in Figure 1. Basically, the Big Data is used for creating the model and defining the equation for each variable in System Dynamics (SD). The outcome of simulation on the System Dynamics is used in planning public policymaking and its implementation strategies. The feedback line (dot line) is used as the learning process to make a correction on the previous process.
Figure 1. Big Data, System Dynamics and Public Policymaking
Nasution et al. (2017a) gives a good sample how Big Data is used in modeling of System Dynamics as well as creating equations among variables. In the same paper, System Breakdown Structure is also introduced (Nasution and Bazin, 2017). The simulation is then executed to obtain the best possible conditions, so a policy can be applied. Nasution et al. (2017b) introduced the conceptual framework based on these 3 components: Big Data, System Dynamics and Public Policymaking.
The success of Big Data is related to the level of E-Government Maturity (Romijn, 2014). The higher the E-Government Maturity level, the more intensive the utilization of Big Data is in the government. At the highest level of E-Government Maturity, the data and information are utilized optimally to feed into the SD or public policymaking (Bri, 2009). It is also explained by Nasution et al. (2018). The next step, the simulation is conducted and the output of SD feeds into the process of public policymaking.