Critical Systems Thinking Applied to Rural Telecommications Infrastructure Planning -- Theo Andrew, August 5, 2002

46th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), Shanghai, P.R. China, August 2-6, 2002.

Sunday, August 5, 2002, 10:30 a.m., Critical Systems Track

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. These should not be viewed as official transcripts of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. These notes have been contributed by David Ing (daviding@systemicbusiness.org) at the IBM Advanced Business Institute ( http://www.ibm.com/abi ).

Durban Institute of Technology, South Africa

Ericsson, Telecomm

Background as engineer, moving towards soft systems thinking.

Goal of the project, to the funders:

• To develop a framework for the planning and design of rural telecommunications infrastructure, applicable to developing countries.

Agenda:

• Challenges in rural telecomm planning
• Why CST was chosen as an approach
• Multimethodological framework
• Concluding remarks.

Why do we need hard systems, and soft systems, and then critical system thinking to resolve issues left in the other two.

• Warfield approach: interpretivist structuralist modeling deals with trying to resolve the conflicts -- used in the second part of the projects.

Telecomm originally seen as the rural infrastructure project -- according to the ITU specifications.

• At the Toronto conference, had written 9 papers on this project.
• In 1994, was on a 5-month project in Paris.
  • Wouldn't release any traffic data.
  • Hacked in, and found data -- saying that it worked technically, but not socially.
• Rural telecomm infrastructure system is interdependent with other systems, a subsystem of the rural telecomm system (with emergent properties).
• This is an ideal-seeking system.
• How should we design the rural infrastructure system, such that we can merge the emergent properties of the other subsystems (e.g. sociological / culture, political / regulatory, ...)

Background:

• Dynamic sociotechnical system (as defined by Warfield 1994, rather than Tavistock).
• Also Ulrich 1996 definition of planning, the art of promoting improvement.
• Software issues of cultural diversity, ownership, multiple stakeholders, as important is hard technological systems.

Set of seven principles in a framework.

• Highlights ...
• FP3: Must combine the strengths of various approaches -- hard systems, soft systems
• FP4: Must take care of disadvantaged rural communities
• FP5: Must be flexible and adaptable to contexts
  • e.g. communities in hills and valleys
  • e.g. radio masks, but have to serve the leader before the people.
• FP7: Must include features of the current planning process
  • Needed buy-in by state telecomm, who were funding.
  • If there were any good engineering practices, needed to include in the framework.

Why critical systems thinking?

• Need a interpretivist, functionalist and emancipatory approach.
• CST underpinned by critical social theory (Habermas, 1974, 1984).
• Commitment to critical awareness, emancipation and methodological pluralism.
• Needed to give the people a voice, and unlock the potential of the planners.

After thought CST appropriate, needed to select an approach.

• Looked at TSI version 1.
  • Has been criticized because had to use a whole methodology, and didn't want to use it.
  • Mingers
• TSI version 2 criticized for complexity, and lack of philosophical foundation.
  • Challenge with Habermas' three worlds picture.
• Then went with multimethodology as a way to mix methods, fulfills the need for methodology pluralism as advocated by CST.

Looked at interactive planning from a different angle:

• Current reality of particular rural area
• Have an idealized design of the rural telecomm system
• Tension between the above that needs ongoing resolution
• How do we leverage towards an idealized design?

Planning and Design:

• Not using interactive planning exactly as Ackoff.
• Problem with interactive planning is that it's not conducive to the real work in implementation.
  • Even formulation in the mess wasn't very conducive.

Formulation of Mess:

• Problem: couldn't get telecomm planners to meet with the community.
  • Then looked as validation by the community as a step.
• Created a stakeholder analysis.
  • Could just list.
• Used boundary questions in critical systems heuristics, to check the stakeholder analysis.
  • Used TOP perspectives in Unbounded Systems Thinking (Lindblom & Mitroff)
• Surprised that did come up with a rich picture (from SSM)
• This brought in new world views.
• Then set up the community:
  • Difficulties with political factions, contributing to what the telecomm people did.

Ends planning:

• Thought would use conceptual modelling from SSM.
• Used interactive planning
  • Had 20 to 30 issues, i.e. systems e.g. health, government communications.
  • Kept the technology aside, so the planning was very service-oriented.
• Note: that formulation of the mess actually puts you into a mess.
  • Picked out elements from the rich picture.
• Lots of issues, until using Interpretative Structural Modelling, then could get down to real world implementation.
• Via a computer, posed questions about which elements which were most important.
  • Got a priority structure.
• Then engineers could design the system.
  • If unpacked the entire priority structure, couldn't feasibly put in a structure, as uneconomical, but prioritization reduced list.

Questions

Quantification of the current situation

• Yes, but didn't present.
• Rich picture is of the mess, not the future state.
• Brief is to be a telecommunications planner, limits scope of societal intervention.

How was mess transformed into the desired state?

• Used the Interpretivist Structure Modeling.
• Looked at AHP, which didn't work as well.
• Didn't use Interactive Planning of Warfield and Cardenas
• In a coercive, messy situation, needed some techniques that would empower people and planners.
• If had only the planners, would have gone with the interactive planning workshop.