The Budget Officer as Decision Architect: Designing the Decision-Making Environment

Government leaders make decisions for a living. With good decision making, they can greatly improve the lives of their constituents and further their own careers. But decision making is messy. It is often done by groups, so there are conflicting points of view. It is usually time constrained, so there isn’t time to consider everything. There is always uncertainty, usually more than we realize. And it is done by humans, so it comes with the myriad of well-documented psychological biases. Finance officers can help their organization make better decisions by "architecting" the decision-making environment. In this session, we will discuss the key skills of a decision architect, how finance officers have used them, and how you can build them.