What's a ESS?

A ESS (or DSS more in general) is a software system under control of one of many decisionmakers that assists in their activity of decision making by providing and organised set of tools intended to impart structure to portions of the decision making situation and to improve the ultimate effectiveness of the decision outcome". Sharing the same concepts of a DSS, an ESS focuses more in the end-user requirements of maximum interactivity and userfriendlyness. An ESS can be understood as a friendly, fully customised and interactive DSS to be mostly used by top executives and policy-makers to get permanent and updated assessment in relation to key questions (information and knowledge). While a complete DSS will have efficient links to external large databases and advanced models, an ESS focuses only on interactive and executive assessment tools, those which can be used personally by endusers. An ESS requires a previous expert work filtering information and knowledge into meaningful indicators and tools. Because of ESS definition, its design and implementation must integrate future users as much as feasible, since a ESS represents both a challenge and an opportunity to improve their working processes. Although software development play an integral role in any Executive Support System design (and more in general in the Decision Support System world) the analysis of ESS and DSS is about how people think and

make decisions Anyway a ESS will induce organisational changes which can not be succesful in complex institutions unless they are clearly preceived and desired since the begining. Recent developments on ESS and DSS tend to integrate the multiple decisions being taken by the institution, so they become Organisational DSS. An ODSS is therefore a participative process, instead of a mandatory product. In the figure, the green circle represents the domain area of a typical Executive Support System.

Supporting decision-making processes Rational decisions by "computers" Start with the data: Almost free from prejudicies. Rational formulation Large volums of information Inductive in-depth analysis Specialised: Sectorial analysis Large volums of calculations, slow conclusions Optimisation strategy from all possible solutions Emotional decision-makers ("people") Start with a provisory solution to be validated and modified Adaptative behaviour Limited access to information Intuitive-deductive search for "patterns" Global: Multisectorial synthesis Rapid expression of personal perceptions Satisfying strategy based on "acceptable" possibilitie

Decision-making approaches FUNCTIONALECONOMIC economic efficiency stakes allocating scarce resources political interest STRATEGICPOLITICAL

paramount objective

maximum marginal social benefit-cost maximize users (travelers) utility and minimize externalities sectorial basically shortterm cost-benefit quantitative results

create social consensus and social mobilization maximize voters perception multi-sectorial long-term in theory,

goals

issues

timing

short-term in most cases multi-party negotiation

framework

period

transport projects

development paradigm

decisionmaking goals Permanent territorial control Short-term private interest

decisionmaking leadership MilitaryReligious imposition Private iniciative

Pre-Industrial

Military Roads and Ports

Colonization

1800-1900 Early Industrialization 1900-1975 Mass Industrialization

Firsts Canals and Railways Developing National Transportation Networks Managing the existing transport capacity International and Local Networks Development

Exogenous in National scale

Exogenous International scale

Long-term development strategy Short-term socialeconomic rationality Permanent environmental and development negotiation

Political iniciative

1975-1985 Industrial Crisis

Close endogenous

Bureaucratic rationality

>1985 Post Industrialization

Open endogenous

Social agreement

SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS

EXPERT ANALYSIS

POLICY ANALYSIS

Evaluation Models (e.g. CBA, Multicriteria...) Explanatory Models Forecast Models (e.g. 4-Steps) Backcast Model Conceptual Models Policy Indicators

Statistic Models (e.g. Linear regression)

Conceptual structure of an DSS (implications for an ESS) Despite the particularities of each ESS, they share with more general DSS some fundamental elements: -Information system: Databases with consistent structure -Models to generate unknown information (e.g. Impacts of alternative decisions). In an ESS model should ideally be interactive and their results linked to policy relevant indicators. -Knowledge basis to put in a political context information and model's outcomes, and evaluate them. Policy actions are the result of adding purposes and goals to knowledge. User-Interfaces The users of the ESS must ideally get friendly and customised access to information, models and knowledge (policy relevant indicators), according to their needs). Interactivity is a requirement to make "reinforcing learning" possible. Each module, and the links between them, require specific software and hardware solutions, which should be designed together by systems experts and end-users. Information component: Giving structure to policy-relevant Data descriptors and indexes.
Architectures

Models component: Predicting impacts of policy actions in different overall scenarios to produce meaningful and consistent indicators to evaluate alternative policy actions. Knowledge component ESS knowledge-base could integrate few major elements: -Policy indicators monitoring the impacts and needs of EU policies (calculated in the model base) -Knowledge-based tools (e.g. Interactive models supporting policy

evaluation). -All other fuzzy knowledge elements which can not be encapsuled within strict "scientific methods"