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Context:
Beyond Current Horizons Programme.
As society and technology continue to evolve at rapid rates, the issues raised will have far-reaching consequences for education. The Beyond Current Horizons programme aims to look beyond 2025 in order to equip education to prepare for and respond to these changes.
House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology 7th report 2005-06 on Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence-based Policy Making.
We commend the Government and the Government Office for Science on their work aimed at strengthening horizon scanning in relation to science and technology across Government. In order to combat the short-term political cycle, there is a need for horizon scanning to be embedded into the policy making process.
Government response to Select Committee
The Government has seen significant benefits to policy-making arising from the GO-Science HSC across a range of issues. A valuable lesson learned as the HSC has evolved is the importance of balance between all evidential streams as they affect and are affected by science, technology, economics, society, and politics. The HSC made an important contribution to the Treasury document-Long-term opportunities and challenges for the UK: analysis for the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review (November 2006). While it does not provide certainties, horizon scanning helps policy-makers test their assumptions and identify emerging issues that need further examination. The work of the HSC will contribute to many of the areas of risk and communication identified by the Committee's Report.
Horizon scanning, which is led for the Government by the GO-Science, is an important means of ensuring that strategic decisions are informed and challenged by the analysis of possible futures.
The Government is pleased by the Committee's recognition of the value of the work of the Government's Horizon Scanning Centre (HSC), which brings long term strategic perspectives into Government business
Public Administration Select Committee Second Report 2006-07 Governing the Future (Adobe PDF)
Governments have to find ways to overcome the political and practical difficulties associated with thinking about the future?.In particular, we commend the work of the Foresight Programme which is recognised as a world leader in its field.
There needs to be a stronger culture of policy evolution whereby policies are updated and adapted as new evidence emerges. We recognise the political difficulties involved in achieving a change, but we urge the Government, as well as the opposition parties, to move towards a situation where a decision to revise a policy in the light of new evidence is welcomed rather than being perceived as a policy failure.
Future thinking is an uncertain business. Strategies should be kept under review so that they take account of new information and developments in research
- Civil Service Top 200 Learning Set on Risk (accessible to Goverment users only):
We shouldn’t be afraid of futures thinking or scenario planning. This is a key element of our role as management board members and needs to be taken seriously and developed. Creating the space to do it is, perhaps, the first challenge for us.
- Government Office for Science
Government science & innovation investment framework 2004-2014
"All Government departments will be using sophisticated scientific horizon-scanning techniques, linked both to their own policy horizon scanning, that of other departments, and to the GO-Science horizon-scanning centre. This should involve departments drawing upon the science base to ensure they are informed about future risks and opportunities. " see also the DTI page on the Eight Attributes of Government Science - Chief Scientific Adviser's Guidelines on Scientific Analysis in Policy Making:
"Individual departments should ensure that adequate horizon scanning procedures are in place, sourcing data across all evidential areas, to provide early indications of trends, issues, or other emerging phenomena that may create significant impacts that departments need to take account of3. Departments should ensure that their horizon scanning evidence is appropriately considered and, where necessary, acted upon."
- Code of Practice for Scientific Advisory Committees:
"In order to provide timely advice to Ministers, committees should ensure that they have mechanisms in place that allow them to consider on a regular basis whether new issues in their particular areas of responsibility are likely to emerge for which scientific advice or research might be needed."
- Prime Minister's Strategy Unit - Strategy Survival Guide
- Professional Skills for Government (PSG) - Analysis and use of evidence
- National School of Government Strategic Thinking courses
- HM Treasury Comprehensive Spending Review:
"Looking forward, there are new challenges Britain will need to address.......... including:
- a rapid increase in the old age dependency ratio as the 'baby boom' generation reaches retirement age;
- the intensification of cross-border economic competition as the balance of international economic activity shifts toward rapidly growing emerging markets such as China and India;
- an acceleration in the pace of innovation and technological diffusion and a continued increase in the knowledge-intensity of goods and services;
- continued global uncertainty with ongoing threats of international terrorism and global conflict; and
- increasing pressures on our natural resources and global climate from rapid economic and population growth in the developing world and sustained demand for fossil fuels in advanced economies.
These changes will have fundamental and far-reaching implications for public services and will require innovative policy responses, co-ordination of activity across Departmental boundaries and sustained investment in key areas. "
- HM Treasury report on Long-term opportunities and challenges for the UK: analysis for the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review.
- Horizon scanning is a vital tool
In many cases action to mitigate potentially damaging trends and encourage positive ones will be the most effective response?.society will also need to be ready to adapt to trends it helps to create.
- HM Treasury Risk Management guidance:
"Increasingly both in the public and private sectors the importance of looking over the horizon and managing upcoming risk is now recognised."
"Policy makers could well be interested in developments over the next twenty-five years whilst horizon scanning that supports operational decision making may be restricted to a six month timeframe."
"Horizon scanning...in particular depends on maintaining a good network of communications with relevant contacts and sources of information to facilitate identification of changes which will affect the organisation's risk profile."
- HM Treasury report Risk: Good Practice in Government Mar 2006
- Government Social Research Magenta Book guidance notes for policy evaluation and analysis.
National Security Strategy
Wherever possible, we will tackle security challenges early. We are committed to improving our ability to scan the horizon for future security risks, and to developing our capabilities for preventive action. We will consider: how to strengthen the Government’s capacity for horizon scanning, forward-planning and early warning to identify, measure, and monitor risks and threats; and our capacity for strategic thinking and prioritisation, spanning traditional boundaries between domestic and foreign policy, defence and security, and intelligence and diplomacy."
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