Decision Support Analysis

Decision Support Analysis (DSA) can help you make decisions!

  • Are you tired of always defending your elected officials’ and staff’s decisions?
  • Are you criticized for making decisions based on parochial politics or personal self interest?
  • Do citizens charge your council with deciding issues before they have been discussed?
  • Are the words “back room politics” used in the local newspaper editorials to describe public policy making?

LL Decker & Associates offers its clients a decision-making process called Decision Support Analysis (DSA).  DSA was designed to help jurisdictions come to grips with tough decisions.  DSA helps organize the options, define the factors, describe the alternatives, quantify the outcomes, and articulate the reasons for a particular direction.  It not only makes the process transparent to the public, but it gives everyone a clear understanding of what to expect as a result.  DSA builds organic trust in the decision.

Decision Support Analysis

Decision Support Analysis (DSA) is a way to help policy groups make rational, informed decisions about complex and difficult public issues that have no clear answers.  It’s a “Bayesian technique” (decision matrix) that quantifies qualitative data so alternatives can be constructed and the effects of various factors applied to each of those alternatives.  Sounds complicated… huh?
Here’s how it works:

A group of policy makers and their staff assemble to consider a problem or issue.  They:

• Identify their desired outcomes.
• List the critical factors (boundaries, objectives, features, etc) that must be met or considered in making that decision. 
• Discuss the possible decision alternatives
• Select the alternatives that are most attractive
• Discuss each of the alternatives
• Decide, individually, how each alternative meets the critical factors.
• Consider the “non-quantifiable” factors of the decision

The computer does all the rest.

 

© LL Decker & Associates, Inc 2014