The Government has assembled a Systems Insight Team to help departments understand complex policy and delivery problems, which is excellent news for anyone who has watched a straightforward question develop its own governance structure.
The Open Innovation Team announced the cross government unit on 2 June 2026. It offers analysis, advice and training using systems thinking, operating as an in house consultancy on a cost recovery basis. Its work includes the award winning Net Zero Systems Tool and other tools intended to show how organisations, incentives and dependencies connect.
This is sensible work. Real problems do not politely remain inside the department that first receives them. They travel through budgets, regulations, services and the public, leaving everyone to discover that the arrows on the diagram were not decorative after all.
The Systems Insight Team exists to identify interdependencies, risks and opportunities, then help colleagues think through the consequences of different policy choices. It is the sort of approach that asks what happens next, followed by what happens after that, followed by why somebody has just brought a biscuit tin into the risk register.
The team also provides training, from introductions to deeper systems techniques. This means officials can learn to see the whole picture, rather than concentrating heroically on the one corner where their own paperwork is stored. Somewhere, a briefing note is being shown the rest of the world and reacting badly.
A fictional string diagram has welcomed the development while requesting that nobody describe it as a stakeholder. It has spent years connecting boxes with arrows and is now worried that a serious consultancy may ask it to produce measurable outcomes, demonstrate value and attend a workshop about its personal journey.
The danger, naturally, is that systems thinking becomes another system requiring a system to explain it. A tool designed to reveal hidden connections may connect itself to a framework, a steering group and a seven page PDF explaining where the framework goes. The PDF will then require an implementation plan, which will require a diagram, which will require the original tool to explain why it has become part of the problem.
Still, the underlying idea is hard to fault. Better analysis can help public bodies understand how decisions behave outside the meeting room. The string diagram has therefore agreed to remain calm, provided the interdependencies stop forming an interdependency about who is responsible for the kettle. It has now requested a governance review of the kettle, and is the only item in the room with a clear delivery plan.
Source: GOV.UK.
