Future projects – a brief overview
New projects are selected from a list of topics where standard criteria have been met and cross government support has been identified. It is important therefore to ensure that the list is informed by a wide spectrum of views from government, academia, business and others who have an interest in how the future might develop and how we can influence it to our benefit now.
The criteria a project has to satisfy include that it should:
- Be future orientated and based on science and technology
- Not duplicate work already taking place elsewhere
- Have action orientated outcomes that can be influenced by the work of the project
- Have buy-in commitment from all key stakeholders, and
- Involve cross disciplinary science and technology and cross departmental issues
No project can start without the full involvement of several departments, at least one of whose minister will be prepared to Chair the High Level Stakeholder Group, which steers the project once it is up and running. They will have also signed up to taking relevant project findings forward once the findings are launched.
We are currently in the process of identifying projects to start during the second half of 2008. In addition to consulting within Government, Professional Bodies, representative of the science and futures communities and wider socio-economic interests, we will shortly be offering the opportunity to contribute ideas via this website. Responses will be clustered to represent a coherent portfolio of ideas which will be subject to close scrutiny through workshops and other consultative processes to test the strength of the ideas, the rigour of the grouping, and most importantly whether the criteria have been satisfied.