2026 OpenFisca Conference - Adaptive policy for adaptive systems - Michael Outram

Michael Outram presents on the gaps between policy intent and operational reality in border management, highlighting three key areas: systems' inability to see certain threats, systems seeing threats but being unable to act on them due to volume, and systems not being designed to recognize certain threats like critical infrastructure exploitation. He proposes using digital policy twins, operational twins and digital sandboxes to address knowledge gaps, visibility gaps, and feedback gaps between policymakers and operational systems. Michael also discusses the importance of co-designing policies with industry and building cross-portfolio federated architectures to enable real-time sharing of insights while preserving privacy and confidentiality.