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Cuts across all aspects of government
- Strategic foresight capacity needs to be seen as an ecosystem that cuts across all aspects of government. It is built from interwoven, mutually reinforcing roles, responsibilities and activities. The socio-cultural and government context matters. This influences a society’s appetite for long-term thinking, comfort with complexity, and uncertainty.
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Jun 23, 2021 · Successful foresight ecosystems are built through a series of actions that cover all four of the features (Culture and behaviour, Processes, Structures and People) over time. The priority and phasing for any given foresight ecosystem will be shaped by a system’s development and national context.
- Disclaimer
- Acknowledgements
- Background
- Key findings
- 1. Culture and behaviour
- 2. Processes
- 3. Structures
- 4. People
- Building efective ecosystems
- an efective foresight system. This
- Culture and behaviour
- Structures
- People
- Processes
- Section 1. Why strategic foresight, why now?
- What is strategic foresight?
- Box 3: The pull of short-termism. Statements from the workshop
- Section 2. Approach to the project
- Where we have focused
- Section 3. A foresight ecosystem approach
- Layer 2: The government context
- Judiciary Netherlands
- Public and arm’s length bodies Finland
- Layer 3: The foresight ecosystem
- 1. Create demand for foresight work and its integration into policy-making
- CREATING DEMAND
- 3. Curate and nurture itself to build resilience
- Section 4. The necessary ingredients for ef ective strategic foresight
- Making use of the features as a foresight ecosystem advocate or leader
- Culture and behaviour
- Structures
- People
- Processes
- 1 Culture and behaviour
This report was commissioned by the Government Office for Science. It was conducted and authored by School of International Futures and any views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the Government Office for Science or Her Majesty's Government.
SOIF would like to thank the Government Office for Science for their support and collaboration during the project. We also want to acknowledge the project team: Anne Bowers, Cat Tully, Iman Jamall, Mary Carenbauer, Peter Glenday and Ruth Beveridge for their support and dedication during the project.
Strategic foresight, or foresight, is an organised, systematic way of looking beyond the expected trajectory towards the future to engage with uncertainty and complexity. It is one of a number of approaches that can help decision-makers to create better policy and strategy in the face of unpredictable change and evolution. Foresight is not new, gov...
There is no silver bullet for creating effective sustainable foresight in government. Considering foresight as an “ecosystem” that includes the socio-cultural and political context of that nation is critical to ensure lasting integration into policy-making (see figure 1). Focusing on a unit or department can enhance the value of specific projects o...
Culturally, effective foresight ecosystems and their leaders focus on creating commitment to their work from within their own field and from the wider policy landscape. One of the most effective ways to do this is by bringing policy-makers into foresight activities to engender shared buy-in and ownership.
Effective foresight ecosystems have a (small) number of set piece activities that tend to articulate a range of cross-cutting trends and their macro impact, providing policy-makers with a common framework from which to start. They develop their own work, bringing new ideas into the discussion and they work across all the levers in a government syst...
All of the systems we looked at, with the exception of the United States, have central units as part of their ecosystem (and the US government is so big that units within departments or branches of government play this role). They also have capacity in departments, including most frequently the defence departments and in science and technology. Mor...
Effective foresight ecosystems ensure they have the right skills and resources. Some systems invest in the development of the next generation of long-term thinking policy-makers both in their pre-employment education and in their on-the-job training. Sometimes champions with visible single leadership are critical to sustained foresight activity. T...
As noted above, these features never exist all This review took place during the COVID-19 at the same time in one system. The context pandemic, which formed an unavoidable changes, the priorities of governments change backdrop to considerations about where next over time. For those interested in ensuring that for foresight in government. In the cas...
list is provided as a quick summary of the four features of an effective foresight ecosystem. Section 4 a key issue in many foresight and other planning exercises, there was a failure to integrate, act or sustain attention with their implications not fully understood or integrated into policy. By building out the foresight ecosystem, the ambition i...
explores each of these in much more detail, including examples drawn from the case studies, the UK and elsewhere. focus on creating commitment bring policy-makers into foresight meet policy-makers where they are support short-term work with long-term perspective generate shared ownership and buy-in
have central units sitting in or near the heart of government build and foster capacity in departments and agencies work to have courts, elected oficials and audit oficials involved put in place coordinating and sharing groups
make sure that there are in-house skills and capacity invest in the development of the next generation have visible consistent champions support and nurture people working in strategic foresight build local and international experts
work across all of government and use all government levers deliver a small number of set piece activities develop their own work draw on diverse methods and disciplines invest in ongoing research and innovation around strategic foresight
Strategic foresight is an organised, systematic way of looking beyond the expected to engage with uncertainty and complexity (see Box 1). It is one of a number of approaches that embrace complexity, simplify uncertainty, explore disruption and bring external forces into a policy or strategy frame. Thinking about the future has always been an implic...
Strategic foresight facilitates a systematic engagement with the future which embraces complexity and uncertainty. It can also enable communities to shape that same future, while increasing their resilience and adaptability to external shocks. This is true whether a foresight practitioner is working on a single policy area or project, or whether th...
The problem with foresight and futures is that people think its “only useful later” Policy-makers don’t have time to engage with complex tools Governments change, our responsibility is to make them aware that this is an issue COVID has exposed demand for our ability to live in ambiguity – an adjacent skill to foresight Scenarios are only a bridge t...
The Government Ofice for Science (GOS) works to embed futures work in policy-making across UK government. Its foresight team supports this activity through a dual focus on supply and demand, in line with its four priorities: Culture: consideration of future challenges, opportunities and uncertainties is embedded in every government department’s sta...
Any foresight ecosystem is surrounded by multiple commentators and stakeholders, often pushing their own agendas and priorities, encouraging and influencing approaches to foresight. This report focused specifically on the work inside government; it has not delved into the specifics of how foresight teams and ecosystems are using that wider ecosyste...
Delivery of foresight is often thought about in terms of individual structures, processes and tools. However, to embed strategic foresight into policy requires a set of mutually reinforcing and reliant ingredients that together provide the type of ongoing, long-term thinking required of today’s policy-making. And so, an ecosystemic approach, needs...
The institutions of government and how they function also inform the nature of a fit-for-purpose foresight ecosystem. This includes the politics of a given nation, politics that evolve and change over time, sometimes without clear warning or prediction. These institutions include the executive, legislature, judiciary, audit bodies, arm's length bod...
In the Netherlands the court is an activist player and dynamic driver towards long-termism in the system. The Oslo Principles on Global Climate Change Obligations were a landmark set of obligations which called for government responses to climate change be mandated both morally and legally. More recently in the Netherlands young people sued governm...
In Finland, Sitra is an independent futures organisation and fund that is responsible for promoting the wellbeing of Finland. Sitra reports to Parliament and is not responsible to any particular governmental party. The structure of Sitra ensures financial and political independence. The impact of Sitra’s work is measured for Parliament but also “fo...
Within this government context, itself shaped by the socio-cultural context, the foresight ecosystem functions. It iterates and evolves over time, working to be sustained and relevant as these contexts shift. Any foresight system has three functions (see figure 4):
This is about making sure that across the government there is the real desire to integrate thinking about a dynamic uncertain future into policy choices and strategic decisions. This includes: Building the appetite and expectation for strategic foresight from decision-makers, leaders, policy oficials Creating expectation in the public that their po...
This is often a balance between developing internal capabilities and growing a robust market of provision • Create and secure the time and space to deliver strategic foresight work that responds to what policy-makers are asking for and leaves capacity to develop, to identify and explore new topics and areas of interest and relevance.
Effective foresight ecosystems cultivate and build allies in their government and with international bodies. Successful foresight ecosystems build alliances of distributed support and interconnectivity across endeavours in public / semi-public bodies (including networks across the civil service/ executive, checks and balances across legislature, au...
Effective foresight ecosystems cultivate and build allies in their government and with international bodies. Successful foresight ecosystems build alliances of distributed support and interconnectivity across endeavours in public / semi-public bodies (including networks across the civil service/ executive, checks and balances across legislature, au...
Effective foresight ecosystems cultivate and build allies in their government and with international bodies. Successful foresight ecosystems build alliances of distributed support and interconnectivity across endeavours in public / semi-public bodies (including networks across the civil service/ executive, checks and balances across legislature, au...
Effective foresight ecosystems cultivate and build allies in their government and with international bodies. Successful foresight ecosystems build alliances of distributed support and interconnectivity across endeavours in public / semi-public bodies (including networks across the civil service/ executive, checks and balances across legislature, au...
Effective foresight ecosystems cultivate and build allies in their government and with international bodies. Successful foresight ecosystems build alliances of distributed support and interconnectivity across endeavours in public / semi-public bodies (including networks across the civil service/ executive, checks and balances across legislature, au...
Effective foresight ecosystems cultivate and build allies in their government and with international bodies. Successful foresight ecosystems build alliances of distributed support and interconnectivity across endeavours in public / semi-public bodies (including networks across the civil service/ executive, checks and balances across legislature, au...
Effective foresight ecosystems cultivate and build allies in their government and with international bodies. Successful foresight ecosystems build alliances of distributed support and interconnectivity across endeavours in public / semi-public bodies (including networks across the civil service/ executive, checks and balances across legislature, au...
Effective foresight ecosystems cultivate and build allies in their government and with international bodies. Successful foresight ecosystems build alliances of distributed support and interconnectivity across endeavours in public / semi-public bodies (including networks across the civil service/ executive, checks and balances across legislature, au...
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May 12, 2021 · There is a common set of features that have helped countries to build future-oriented, resilient and adaptable foresight ecosystems (see Figure 2). These features are mutually reinforcing...
Jul 14, 2021 · Strategic foresight capacity needs to be seen as an ecosystem that cuts across all aspects of government. It is built from interwoven, mutually reinforcing roles, responsibilities and...
SOIF exists to help policy-makers and business leaders improve the present and the future by using foresight and futures methods to make better strategic choices about the future, to improve the...
We pulled together evidence from a range of resources to generate insights on building effective foresight ecosystems. We developed a typology and long-listed 50 countries before prioritising a short-list to focus on.
May 11, 2021 · The report contains case studies of how 8 countries integrate foresight in a comprehensive way across policy-making, drawing on a high-level literature review and semi-structured interviews.
