Nationlab
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
NationLab is a computer-assisted national strategic seminar, played annually in schools of national strategy throughout Latin America. It is intended to provide the participants with an opportunity to test new concepts for long-term national policies and reforms.
The focus of NationLab can be placed on any social, political, or economic aspects of national security or strategy. These aspects may include poverty, corruption, organized crime, contraband, terrorism, social inequality, ethnic relations, land reform, education reform, public health, demographic trends, political centralization, free trade agreements, and narcotrafficking. The initial conditions of the seminar are the current conditions in the host nation.
NationLab is not a war-game; it is a national strategic seminar without force-on-force conflict.
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[edit] Participants and Roles
The participants in a NationLab seminar are typically the students of the host nation’s highest school of national strategic studies. They include politicians, diplomats, judges, military officers, career government employees, professionals (lawyers, doctors, engineers, educators, etc), and national police officers. During the seminar each participant plays a role in government: president, vice president, ministers, vice ministers, central bank, opposition leaders, national police, and international roles including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Inter-American Development Bank.
[edit] Seminar play
Seminar play lasts four days, each day representing a presidential administration. In each day of a NationLab seminar, role players for the administration, the legislature, and the opposition create long-term policies that are intended to address the most urgent needs of the country. Some countries elect to have additional players for radical opposition groups, whose policies and strategies are in conflict with the government. Role players for international institutions play a key role in financing or otherwise influencing national policies.
At the end of each day the participants meet as a "committee of the whole" to discuss and adjudicate the outcome of all conflicting or questionable policies. Every participant has a vote in the adjudication process. Economic and social outcomes of a quantitative nature are then projected forward in time with the assistance of a dynamic computer simulation model, based on the adjudicated actions of all parties in the seminar.
The projected conditions within the nation become the starting situation for the next day of the seminar. In this way each presidential administration in the seminar inherits the unsolved problems and conflicts left over by the previous administration.
The four days of the seminar usually cover a period of ten to twenty years, thus allowing participants to see the medium to long-range outcomes of their policies. They experience the difficulties and frustrations inherent in gaining cabinet and legislative support for new policy initiatives, and implementing them in the face of budget restrictions, political opposition, and problematic relations with international banks.
[edit] History
The concept of NationLab originated in 1998 in the Bolivian School of High National Studies (Escuela de Altos Estudios Nacionales), in La Paz, Bolivia. Computer simulation services and seminar facilitation are provided by the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies.
NationLab seminar are held on an annual basis in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. Bolivia, the nation that originated the NationLab concept, participated during the years 1998-2005. Special-purpose versions of NationLab have been created on request for other nations as well.
An international version of NationLab (called RegionLab) is executed annually at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, DC, with participants from throughout the Western Hemisphere. The focus of RegionLab is on OAS-level international negotiations to resolve serious (but hypothetical) hemispheric problems, complicated by economic development problems and external interference.
As of the end of 2006, over 3500 people have participated in a formal NationLab seminar. NationLab alumni have gone on to become ambassadors, ministers, central bankers, generals and admirals, national police commanders, prosecutors, economic and political advisors, and corporation presidents.
