Abstract
Decision making is a process of choosing among alternative courses of action to attain a goal(s). Specifically, managerial decision-making is a complex task in today's political/business environment. Information analysis is gathered by an intelligence analyst, as someone who is primarily responsible for the analysis, processing, and distribution of strategic and tactical intelligence. The chapter explores the main approaches to both policy cycle and intelligence cycle to make decisions.
TopTopics For Discussion
The following discussion points come from information in this chapter:
TopIntroduction
What’s public policy? A few definitions:
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Policy-making is everything a government decides to do or not to do (Colebatch, 2006).
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Policy-making is a set of decisions and activities related to the solution of a collective problem, need or demand for public intervention (Dunn, 1994).
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Policy-making is a set of concatenated and coherent decisions, taken by one or more public (sometimes private) actors in order to resolve, in a targeted way, a problem defined politically as collective (Knoepfel et al., 2007).
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The decision-making is a political process. The problem solving, as an adaptive process, leads to the analysis to find a solution requiring to make decisions, and induces the policy-maker to assume specific behaviors and actions (Mayer 2014).
In common these and other definitions have that a policy decision is a process of choosing between multiple solutions to a collective problem.
The distinguishing features of the policy processes area progressive complexity, the increase in uncertainty, and a possible increase in conflict. The wide array of features of the policy-making can influence policy decisions. The often- changing policy conditions taken into account identifying problems and deciding how to address them, such as:
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a political system’s geography
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biophysical and demographic profile
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economy
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mass attitudes and behavior
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pre-existing laws, rules, institutions, and programs
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international political (and business) games
State secrecy, military secrecy, investigative secrecy, office secrecy, banking secrecy, industrial secrecy, are only a part of the institutional obstacles set on the government road of free information, and therefore of the knowledge of public affairs (C. Arcuri, 1990).
The politician does not have the time or inclination to absorb a vast amount of information. Knowledge is the true basis of national power and represents the crucial element of the world struggle for the power of the futre. We need to produce an analysis capable of warning, illuminating and empowering politicians (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Politicians and public decisions
Key Terms in this Chapter
Decision-Making: Consists of evaluating and selecting one feasible solution from among a set of alternatives. Decision-making process includes recognizing and defining the nature of a decision situation, identifying alternatives, choosing the ‘best’ [most effective] alternative, putting it into practice.
Foreign Policy: The sum of a state’s all (economic, political, cultural) activities outside its borders to promote the domestic values and interests.
Intelligence Analyst: Who takes care of transforming raw data, collected through the various information channels, into material suitable for being understood and used by the management level.
Problem Solving: The process of identifying alternative possible courses of action representing solutions.
Intelligence: The analytical process for specific needs of anticipated knowledge, to allow decision makers to choose and adopt the strategy to be pursued and, consequently, to decide in a timely, convenient, and effective manner; the competitive intelligence regarding the business intelligence, or investigative intelligence applied to the fight against crime.