Software for Tyrants
SEEMAN, NEIL
Software for Tyrants Harvard proudly markets PolicyMaker 2.2 as a program that will help politicians get what they want. BY NEIL SEEMAN PolicyMaker 2.2™ is a jazzy new computer program devised...
...Microsoft Project, for example, is a popular generic policy planning tool...
...But to many, the rise of computerized policy-making is troublesome...
...It’s used in the World Bank’s flagship health care course for diplomats, “Health Sector Reform and Sustainable Financing,” and in training programs at the Inter-American Development Bank...
...BY NEIL SEEMAN PolicyMaker 2.2™ is a jazzy new computer program devised by Harvard University professor Michael Reich...
...And, more generally, it erodes the role of public servants as individuals—as thinking people and ethical agents...
...PolicyMaker’s gimmick—what the Harvard marketers call its “algorithm”— is devilishly simple...
...history, symptoms, laboratory test results) to help physicians formulate hypotheses and nurse managers control costs...
...Focus groups, online polls, computer programs galore—public policy education boils down to process...
...military systems such as the Integrated Defense Systems (IDS), to determine optimal response times and simulate enemy counter-measures...
...There are programs for “stakeholder analysis” and “political mapping” and infrastructure design...
...These new tools are worlds apart from the high-speed calculators of yore...
...Selling for just under $100, this Nintendo-style spreadsheet—which bills itself as the latest in “computer-assisted political analysis” (CAPA)—has entered the curriculum at schools of public policy around the world...
...and psychiatric tools such as the somewhat scary-sounding Good Mood Program, which enables users to talk through their personal difficulties...
...Just as computer-aided design assists architects to sketch buildings, PolicyMaker helps civil servants design public policy...
...PolicyMaker is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the brave new world of techno-politics...
...And, of course, even totalitarian regimes can benefit from the software...
...It throws to the winds the Aristotelian directive to discover the common good through careful deliberation and honorable leadership...
...Coming up with something you can sell to the public “should not substitute for assuring the ethical and technical bases of a policy...
...It undermines the civil servant’s power to challenge elected officials— by raising questions, courting public approbation, or even taking some initiative to bring about a change of course (what political scientist Hugh Heclo has called “loyalty that argues back...
...Experts in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) anticipate a new generation of computers that will Neil Seeman writes editorials and essays for the National Post, a Canadian daily...
...All of which signals a major step beyond the last generation of artificial intelligence, in which computers merely provided conclusions, albeit powerful ones, based on the information human beings fed them...
...Professor Reich has even heard a rumor that Zambia’s corruption-riddled government is using the program for “political election purposes...
...for they are programmed to make inherently political value judgments—to prefer, say, contracting out over busting unions...
...As Reich puts it, “It can be adapted to situations with different distributions of power...
...Prototypes have already been made that purport to resolve disputes in bioethics and other fields, grade academic essays, and manage prison sentencing...
...criminal law enforcement software such as Brainmaker, used to identify police officers who display behavior that could lead to crime or corruption...
...It has been used to set local health priorities in Tanzania, to analyze government tobacco policy in Vietnam, to assess national pharmaceutical policies in nine African nations, and to impose major health sector reform in Zambia, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic...
...What’s more, these new systems, if and when they fail, cannot be taken to task in public hearings or congressional inquiries...
...Professor Reich, who teaches international health policy, concedes that PolicyMaker, and computer-assisted political analysis in general, carry certain risks...
...PolicyMaker is designed to help policy makers get what they want, which is not necessarily good from an ethical or a technical perspective,” Reich says in a statement that accompanies the program...
...You just punch in your preferred policy outcome, a laundry list of affected “players,” and a potpourri of potential “obstacles,” and seconds later your PC disgorges page upon page of brightly colored “feasibility graphs” showing the pros and cons of dozens of diverging, pre-programmed political strategies for achieving your goal...
...For those who believe that efficient delivery of public services is the most important goal of public administration, these twenty-first-century tools have clear advantages...
...Finally, those who see public administration as a branch of science must feel at home in the new world...
...And liberal idealists who object to a world where decisionmakers are guided primarily by self-interest doubtless welcome computer-assisted policy-making...
...Examples of these earlier information-processing tools include medical systems such as MYCIN, which tabulates information about patients’ cases (e.g...
...New software like PolicyMaker is helping drive the revolution...
...That might appeal to liberal political theorists such as Theodore Lowi (The End of Liberalism, 1969) who have argued passionately that the American system delegates too much discretionary authority to administrative agencies, a recipe for patronage government and unaccountable bureaucracies...
...For all its snazzy graphics, mechanized policy-making puts us on a dangerous path...
...All these initiatives pale in comparison with what lies ahead...
...Since the debut of the prototype two years ago (version 2.2 just hit the stands), PolicyMaker’s influence on international policy-making has been dizzying...
...Step inside any school of public policy today and you will find that policymaking is the province of automatons...
...Already under development is software that allows users to assess the prospects for generating political will— out of thin air!—for a virtually limitless range of domestic policy reforms...
...soon be able to act as autonomous agents, to assess the political environment and even think using emotions and instinct...
...The United Nations Development Program has its own software...
...First, they remove inconvenient levels of discretion from the policy-making process...
...and Private Agencies Collaborating Together (PACT) has developed, with USAID funding, an “analytic capacity assessment tool” for non-governmental organizations called DOSA (Discussion-Oriented SelfAssessment...
Vol. 5 • August 2000 • No. 47
