Operational research in government and planning

This paper analyses the difficulties encountered by OR in the field of government and planning, difficulties due to the sociological nature of the executive and the administrative systems and to the psychology of ministers and civil servants. To improve this situation the paper suggests (1) changes in the composition of OR teams and the competence of their members (collaboration of model-builders and “reformers”, improvement of knowledge of basic sciences by model-builders, long experience of reorganization of reformers, sufficient familiarity with the public sector); (2) transformations in the mode of realization of studies (definition of problems, choices of objectives and criteria, reasoning in terms of general systems, costing, ...); (3) definition of a long-term policy for OR research-teams; (4) modifications in the relations between teams and decision-makers; (5) introduction of OR in the functioning of the democratic systems.