Systems Observatory

Twelve leverage points · Aotearoa political economy · a living archive

A living dashboard of Donella Meadows' twelve leverage points — the places where a system can be intervened in, from the shallowest tweak of a parameter down to the deepest shift of the paradigm it arises from. Each of the twelve panels maps a Meadows tier to a public Aotearoa indicator, watches it against its own 24-period baseline, and flags deviations that challenge the current political-economic paradigm.

Meadows' framework, wired to Aotearoa data

Meadows argued that most policy energy is spent at the shallowest tiers — twiddling numbers, patching feedback loops — while the deepest leverage sits in the paradigm the system takes for granted. The Observatory makes that claim inspectable. It pairs each tier with a concrete NZ indicator, refreshes them weekly from public government sources, and lets kaimahi rank interventions by which tier they actually operate at.

Constants & Parameters12Official Cash RateWhose cost of living moves?
Buffers & Stocks11Dwelling consentsAre the buffers thick enough?
Material Flows10Greenhouse-gas emissionsDoes the economy match ecological limits?
Delays9OIA response timesDoes the state react at the system's speed?
Negative Feedback8Union membershipCan workers correct their conditions?
Positive Feedback7Top-1% wealth shareWhat snowballs faster — capital, or wages?
Information Flows6OIA complaints upheldWho gets to know what?
Rules5Jobseeker recipientsWhose behaviour is disciplined?
Self-Organisation4Iwi co-governanceWho redesigns the system from inside?
Goals3Wellbeing ÷ growth spendWhat is the system optimising for?
Paradigms2Hansard framing ratioWhat is thinkable in this political culture?
Transcending Paradigms1Waitangi Tribunal reportsCan the system see beyond itself?

Three transparent, forkable pieces

01 · Site

Static dashboard

GitHub Pages, versioned JSON, weekly refresh — the same pattern as the Thinkers Mapper. Nothing hidden; every number carries its source.

02 · Compute

Anomaly detection

A Hugging Face Space runs a rolling z-score against each indicator's own history. Deviations of |z| ≥ 2.5 are flagged as paradigm-challenging.

03 · Archive

Community annotation

Kaimahi rank interventions by leverage tier and cite whakapapa. Every submission is written to a public HF dataset — forkable, auditable, CC BY.

Kaupapa. Built under the Māori Data Governance Model of Te Kāhui Raraunga. Public, aggregated, non-personal data only. Every indicator cites its source. Te reo Māori terminology is used deliberately, as a paradigm-shifting act at leverage point #2.

Rank an intervention. Cite a whakapapa.

The observatory is only as good as the readings kaimahi bring to it. If you're watching a pattern in Aotearoa — a housing tightening, a benefit-sanction spike, a Waitangi Tribunal recommendation, a Hansard shift — open the dashboard, propose an intervention, and rank which of Meadows' twelve tiers it actually operates at. Every entry becomes part of the public archive.