BRILL ED (1979) USE OF OPTIMIZATION MODELS IN PUBLIC-SECTOR PLANNING, MANAGEMENT SCIENCE, 25

This article written by Brill in 1979 addresses the trend towards using optimization models in solving public policy problems.

Brill argues that optimization models used to help find solutions to public policy problems "have serious shortcomings" which include failture to consider equity or distribution of income, as well as difficulties in estimating benefits/costs of public programs. Brill says public programs' benefits and costs are better kept in their original units rather than trying to translate them into common units to judge amongst completely different types of objectives.

Brill notes that multi-objective programming was increasingly common to try to address these issues, but he makes the point that all objectives need to be clearly identified in order to truly distinguish between inferior and noninferior solutions, as illustrated well in Figure 2.

Brill proposes that a good way to involve optimization models in public sector planning is to: 1, use them to stimulate creativity, and 2. create a man-machine interactive process. This man-machine interactive process is something he briefly describes in this paper, but it sounds like he most likely researched this idea more and published a paper on it soon after this paper. I found Brill's point interesting that optimization models should generate alternatives that meet minimal requirements and are different.

I'd really like to see a case study of these ideas, and how optimization models can assist public planners in generating creative solutions. It seems to me that a human would easily be just as creative as a computer, so I'd like to see an example showing otherwise.