Government Office for Science

The use of scenarios in government foresight – a review of international good practice

GO-Science commissioned SAMI Consulting to research the use of strategic foresight tools in governments around the world. The aim of the project was: “To provide evidence of international good practice in using futures tools to support systemic foresight in government – with a particular focus on the use of national/generic scenarios.” 

Generic scenarios were defined as those which are developed for use across government. They stand in contrast to issue-related scenarios that may be developed for specific studies or Departments, which tend to have a more granular focus.  In some cases, the more specific scenarios are developed explicitly as sub-sets of the generic scenarios.

SAMI’s Role

SAMI approached the project in three parts

·       A comprehensive literature search – presented in three documents covering a bibliography, a set of 350-word summaries and a detailed discussion of findings

·       Interviewing seven foresight contacts in different countries as case studies of their approaches

·       An online survey of other government foresight contacts asking about the use of scenarios and other foresight tools in government.

The Literature search used a variety of publicly available databases, including academic and professional ones. Over 130 relevant articles were recovered.

SAMI used its “Future Network” of futures experts to identify and get introductions to leading government futurists. Countries were chosen based on their foresight sophistication or innovation. We also included a regional government and an international body.  The analysis reviewed whether forms of government were sufficiently similar to the UK’s to allow comparison and see whether adopting a similar approach might be beneficial.

Outcomes

The project outcomes were summarised in a final report and a sequence of detailed analyses. SAMI subsequently presented a summary of the findings to the Government Futures Network.

The Government Office for Science Futures team said “SAMI’s thorough approach to the project and insightful analysis has supported our thinking on the way we address foresight and scenarios work in the UK”.