Towards a Comparative Analysis of Policy-Making Distribution in Hierarchical Organisations - the Epidemic Management Case Study

Large sustainable systems, e.g. human organisations or socio-technical systems, must manage large-scale crises. This implies prompt responses from policy-makers, including an initial reaction followed by repeated adjustments. Policies must be (re)defined under two opposing difficulties: i) the amount of relevant information to collect and process for effective policies; and ii) the urgency required for their implementation. Most large systems handle this issue via hierarchical organisations, distributing information and control across levels. Still, determining appropriate distributions of policy-making across levels remains a non-trivial problem. This position paper explores the nature of this issue via an illustrative case study: epidemics management. By comparing different policy-making distributions – more or less centralised – it highlights the importance of local details for effective local management and for the ensuing global effects. While still exploratory, this initial study brings to the fore the interplay between local and global policies and the impacts of relevant information for scalable and sustainable management.