Flaw 1 is relevant to some core OR concepts. What is the problem to be addressed? The UK planning was clearly answering the problem of “how do we prepare for a flu pandemic?” when they should have been answering the problem of “how do we reduce the impact of a pandemic across a range of possible diseases?”. Indeed, the Inquiry report highlights that the World Health Organization explicitly advised countries to prepare for a range of diseases, including coronaviruses and an unknown disease X. Soft OR methods for problem structuring might have avoided this flaw, given their emphasis on preserving options in the face of uncertainty (in this case, type of disease).
A second question would be “what is the objective of the planning?”. Baroness Hallett, the inquiry chair, is absolutely explicit that, “When it was said that the UK was well prepared before the COVID-19 pandemic, this meant at the time that the UK should have been able to manage the deaths of this number of people—not that it was prepared to prevent them.” She highlights this is a “fatal strategic flaw” and that prevention and mitigation should have been the aim. Again, problem structuring methods would have required a phase of work to understand stakeholder perspectives and be explicit about defining an aim. Essentially this would have clarified what was actually meant by “prepared for” and allowed for questioning of the implicit assumptions behind the UK pandemic strategy.
Meanwhile, Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is well suited to addressing Flaws 2 and 3 as well as the final part of Flaw 1. Getting a handle on complex systems and identifying feedback loops, unintended consequences and the key interrelated subsystems is the bread and butter of SSM. They would also facilitate solutions to these flaws: identifying feasible simpler structures for instance for pandemic planning and response or identifying key overlooked subsystems (e.g. the exacerbation of existing socio-demographic and health inequalities).
SSM is also well suited to avoiding Flaw 4 – to narrow a rangeof expertise consulted and too restricted remit for advice. Forinstance, the CATWOE mnemonic developed by Smyth in the 1970s forces explicit consideration of who the customers are (in this case, I would argue, the UK population), who the actors are involved in delivering the strategy (in this case this would include academic experts in disease transmission and modelling, but also should have included more experts in behavioural science, economics, public health and then stakeholders involved in delivery the response from health care providers, to local councils, to public health bodies, to employers, to community leaders) and what the worldview of the different stakeholders is. This is a crucial step that would have articulated values of different stakeholders and identified at least some of the gaps in planning identified by the Inquiry. The ownership element of CATWOE would also have mitigated Hallett’s criticism of lack of overall oversight and responsibility in the UK’s emergency planning.
Finally, Flaw 5 is crying out for scenario analysis once the problem and aim have been properly defined. For instance, the possibility of legal requirement to isolate was considered briefly in the UK strategy only to be almost immediately dismissed as too implausible a response. Baroness Hallet correctly pointed out that high impact situations and interventions need to be considered in advance even if they are considered unlikely: “There should be consideration of the interventions that can and should be deployed to prevent a lockdown but also of the circumstances in which a lockdown may become necessary.” Instead, because the aim did not include prevention or mitigation, neither modelling nor pandemic exercises tested the potential impact of interventions up to and including lockdowns. A good Operational Researcher will know to map out and consider the full solution space, even the more extreme solutions.
So, I hope I have convinced you that a greater emphasis on OR throughout the UK’s pandemic planning, including at the most senior levels, could have prevented many of the flaws identified by the Inquiry. And that OR should be absolutely central to improving our emergency planning and should have featured prominently within Baroness Hallet’s recommendations. However, while she explicitly and repeatedly calls for whole-system structures and approaches, Operational Research is not mentioned. Why not? I imagine many of you are thinking something along the lines of “Well, OR is a niche term and I wouldn’t expect it to be mentioned.” OR is a niche term – but it shouldn’t be. Statistics is not, economics is not, even epidemiology or mathematical modelling is not. The fact that OR was clearly not a central part of high-level emergency planning suggests that it simply did not seem as important to those at the very top of UK decision making, including the Chief Scientific Advisor and the Cabinet Office, assuming they had even head of OR. Given the failings in our emergency preparedness, this matters. The challenge of how to create a clear brand for OR and widespread understanding of its strengths among both the public and senior policy makers has been discussed within the OR community for decades. It seems to me that we are no nearer an answer now than we were when I first started working in OR almost 20 years ago, but we need to find one urgently. One new route might be the new Academy of Mathematical Sciences, but I also urge all of you to do what you can to promote a wider understanding of our discipline in society