Ethos Issue 7, Jan 2010
The Future of Futures
Devadas Krishnadas
THE POWER OF MULTIPLE FUTURES
Coordinating and optimising futures
thinking resources across the different
futures units in the public sector have
several implications.
3C Mapping
A mapping of the distribution of
the carrying competencies, capabilities
and capacities of futures units within
government might be needed. Competency
refers to skill sets, capability to systems
and capacity to size and budgets. This
will permit an informed approach to
coordinating collaboration in order
to reach scale for complex futures
challenges. A working principle should
be adopted, which requires futures
units to be mutually supportive. Such
an arrangement would also obviate the
need for each unit to acquire similar
systems or grow capacity to ensure a
wide range of in-house capabilities.
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Public Sector Futurists
Over the past decade, new futures
units have been set up and legacy ones
modified. Futures units in the Singapore
Public Service now straddle a wide range
of policy domains:
• The Strategic Policy Office (formerly
the Scenario Planning Office) develops
strategic planning and policy capabilities
at the national level and across the
whole of government.
• The Risk Assessment and Horizon
Scanning (RAHS) programme within
the National Security Coordination
• The Ministry of Trade and Industry
Futures Group monitors the economic,
trade and industrial landscape.
• A Futures Group within the Future
Systems Directorate in the Ministry
of Defence studies the future operating
environment of the armed forces, and
identifies defence-related challenges,
opportunities and threats.
• A Futures Team at the Ministry of
Community, Youth and Sports studies
the application of futures thinking
to the social policy domain on a
project basis.
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The establishment of the Centre for
Strategic Futures is a step in this direction
and further consolidates the whole-of-government
spirit necessary to tackle
complex futures.
Tractability
Futures units should offer thought
leadership by proactively and independently providing new ideas and perspectives to
senior management. Futures products
should also ideally be delivered within
the context of corporate strategy and
budget cycles. This is to ensure that they
are channelled to the attention of senior
management at key decision-making
junctions, when major commitments
are about to be made.
Discrete Channels
Not all forms of futures thinking are the
same. We have matured from a single
methodology to multiple methodologies,
yet this could lead to a misplaced
assumption that the various futures
thinking processes and products are
interchangeable. A distinction should be
made as to which processes and systems,
and which combinations thereof, are
best suited for particular tasks.
A distinction should also be made
of the varying purposes of futures
thinking. There may be three discrete
strategic purposes:
Normative Strategies
Futures thinking attempts that posit
long-range possible futures, or visioning,
may be best suited to generating
normative strategies. Such strategies are
intended to realise desirable futures or
avoid undesirable ones. They tend to be
complex and slow-moving in execution,
but have long-lasting effects and involve
sticky, usually major, commitments,
such as structural changes to the
education system
or economy.
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