About the Institute for Systems Integrity (ISI)

The Institute for Systems Integrity (ISI) is an independent research and analysis body focused on governance failure, system drift, and institutional accountability across complex public systems.

Modern institutions rarely fail because of a single bad decision or individual misconduct. More often, failure emerges gradually — through accumulated pressure, fragmented oversight, normalised exceptions, and governance arrangements that no longer match the systems they are meant to oversee.

ISI exists to examine these quiet failures.

Why the Institute Exists

Across healthcare, artificial intelligence, infrastructure, finance, and other high-consequence domains, systems are becoming more complex, faster-moving, and more tightly coupled. At the same time, governance structures often remain static, fragmented, or overly reliant on individual responsibility.

When adverse outcomes occur, attention is frequently directed toward individual error or compliance breaches. While accountability matters, this focus can obscure deeper system conditions that shape decision-making, constrain judgment, and normalise risk over time.

ISI was established to help make these conditions visible.

This pattern is examined in depth in ISI’s first Foundations paper on decision-making under system stress.

What We Study

The Institute’s work examines how integrity is shaped — and eroded — by system design. Key areas of focus include:

• Governance failure in complex, high-pressure environments
• Decision-making under sustained system stress
• System drift and the normalisation of deviance
• Misalignment between authority, accountability, and information
• The limits of audit, compliance, and post-hoc inquiry

Our analysis is cross-sectoral. While case material may arise from specific domains, the Institute’s interest lies in the underlying patterns that recur across systems.

How We Work

ISI is deliberately non-partisan and non-advocacy driven. We do not campaign, lobby, or provide consultancy services. Our role is analytical rather than prescriptive.

We publish slowly and selectively, prioritising clarity, evidence, and conceptual rigor over volume or commentary. Our publications are intended to function as reference points for practitioners, policymakers, boards, regulators, and others working inside complex systems.

Where possible, we aim to surface structural risks before they become visible through failure.

Founding and Stewardship

The Institute for Systems Integrity was founded by Dr Alwin Tan, a surgeon and governance advisor with experience across healthcare delivery and system-level decision-making.

ISI is governed with an emphasis on independence, restraint, and public-interest integrity. Stewardship of the Institute is designed to protect analytical credibility over prominence or reach.

The Institute for Systems Integrity exists to support clearer thinking about how systems fail — and how integrity can be designed, rather than assumed.