Public water policy decision making tends to be too complex and dynamic to be
described fully by traditional, rational models. Information intended to improve
decisions often is rendered ineffective by a failure to understand the process. An
alternative, holistic description of how such decisions actually are made is presented here
and illustrated with a case study. The role of information in the process is highlighted.
Development of a Regional Recharge Plan for Tucson, Arizona is analyzed as the case
study.
The description of how decisions are made is based on an image of public water
policy decision making as 1) a structured, nested network of individuals and groups with
connections to their environment through their senses, mediated by their knowledge; and
2) a nonlinear process in which decisions feed back to affect the preferences and
intentions of the people involved, the structure of their interactions, and the environment
in which they operate. The analytical components of this image are 1) the decision
makers, 2) the relevant features of their environment, 3) the structure of their interactions,
and 4) the products or outputs of their deliberations. Policy decisions analyzed by these
components, in contrast to the traditional analysis, disclose a new set of relationships and
suggest a new view of the uses of information.
In context of information use, perhaps the most important output of the decision
process is a shared interpretation of the policy issue. This interpretation sets the
boundaries of the issue and the nature of issue-relevant information. Participants are
unlikely to attend to information incompatible with the shared interpretation. Information
is effective when used to shape the issue interpretation, fill specific gaps identified as
issue-relevant during the process, rationalize choices, and reshape the issue interpretation
as the issue environment evolves.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/615798 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Eden, Susanna, Davis, Donald R. |
| Contributors | Department of Hydrology & Water Resources, The University of Arizona |
| Publisher | Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ) |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, Technical Report |
| Source | Provided by the Department of Hydrology and Water Resources. |
| Rights | Copyright © Arizona Board of Regents |
| Relation | Technical Reports on Hydrology and Water Resources, No. 99-050 |
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