Public administration has witnessed an avalanche of crises spanning financial, economic, health, environmental and governmental domains in the past two decades. Consequently, governments responded with volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) management strategies. Utilising these approaches to new types of systemic crisis which turned into systemic breakdowns, as system-quakes, did not work sufficiently. This article presents the TODO framework—turbulent environments, oscillating knowledge quality, domino falling types of interdependence and opposing ‘solutions’—for understanding these contemporary systemic crisis patterns. Additionally, we propose six institutional reforms aiming at enhancing readiness, including (1) establishing a New Weberian State (NWS) to foster ‘systemic resilience governance’, (2) shifting sequential to simultaneous thinking, (3) embracing a Whole of Government (WoG)/Whole of Society (WoS) approach, (4) ensuring Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) implementation, (5) fostering institutional alignment and (6) promoting collaborative organisational leadership. These reforms aim to create a governance structure characterised by resilience and systemic responsiveness.
Policy Implications
Coping with system-quakes, beyond crises governance, will require significant interventions and measures at the systemic level to ensure systemic resilience. Even when there is no full ex ante evidence, there are significant indications that the following six measures will be necessary:
- Install the Neo-Weberian State Model (NWS) in order to practice Whole-of-Government strategies within Whole-of-Society, and to realise a hierarchy of collaborative organisational leadership.
- Shift from sequential thinking and operating (‘normal/crisis/solve-crisis/back-to-‘normal’/crisis/solve-crisis/back-to-‘normal’/etc.’) to simultaneous thinking and operating (combining service delivery with chronical crises governance and system-quakes).
- Ensure realising horizontal SDGs 11 (local communities), 16 (strong institutions, peace and justice) and 17 (partnerships), especially since the 14 vertical SDGs are in tension.
- Align institutional resilience governance between the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial Branches.
Photo by Karthik A S