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COVID-19 is a wicked problem for policy makers internationally as the complexity of the pandemic transcends health, environment, social and economic boundaries. Many countries are focusing on two key responses, namely virus containment and financial measures, but fail to recognise other aspects. The systems approach, however, enables policy makers to design the most effective strategies and reduce the unintended consequences. To achieve fundamental change, it is imperative to firstly identify the "right" interventions (leverage points) and implement additional measures to reduce negative consequences. To do so, a preliminary causal loop diagram of the COVID-19 pandemic was designed to explore its influence on socio-economic systems. In order to transcend the "wait and see" approach, and create an adaptive and resilient system, governments need to consider "deep" leverage points that can be realistically maintained over the long-term and cause a fundamental change, rather than focusing on "shallow" leverage points that are relatively easy to implement but do not result in significant systemic change

"Design thinking is an abductive approach to complex problem solving that leverages the designer's empathetic mindset in order to understand people's unarticulated needs and identify opportunities for solutions. This is a human-centered innovation process that can be applied to a wide range of challenges: design thinking can be used to create everything from products and services to business models and processes."

With this in mind, a growing chorus has called for broader sealing (also called "expungement") of criminal records. Sealing an official criminal record hides it from view by employers, landlords, and others doing formal background checks. However, relatively few criminal records are currently eligible for sealing (typically minor offenses committed a long time ago), and the process to have a record sealed is complicated and costly. Advocates are pushing to expand the set of records eligible for sealing-and to leverage technology to make sealing automatic. These are often referred to as 'Clean Slate' policies.