Policy Fit for the Future: Building APS Futures and Foresight Capability

By Will Hartigan, Project Director at the Policy Fit for the Future: Building APS Futures and Foresight Capability, Policy Projects and Taskforce Office.

The Australian Public Service (APS) is increasingly facing complex, cross cutting challenges that will continue to change and evolve over the long term. Futures – also known as strategic foresight – can help the APS to identify emerging policy issues early and support the Government of the day to shape outcomes when there is still time to act. It provides structured tools and approaches for engaging with uncertainty, complexity and change – such as horizon scanning, scenario planning and megatrend analysis. These are especially useful for developing insights regarding the contemporary and emerging “big picture” issues that define and drive our world.

These insights can help us weather change and uncertain future events; contribute to better policy and service outcomes for Australians over the long-term; and, critically, help us to take action to shape the future we want.

Futures supports us to explore, anticipate and shape the cross-cutting implications of highly uncertain and complex policy topics such as:

Climate change
New and changing technologies
Geopolitical shifts
Inequality and inclusion

The Policy Fit for the Future project is a six-month project running to January 2024 aiming to embed futures and foresight capabilities into policy teams across the APS, strengthening the APS to deliver for the Australian community, now and into the future. Futures and strategic foresight capability is a priority of Secretaries Board for APS Reform and the APS Capability Reinvestment Fund to support more strategic policy.

Focusing on 'what's next' in domestic policy, the project has just completed a series of workshops with SES band 2 leaders to reveal strategic insights from across the APS for Secretaries Board and departmental executives on forward challenges for the APS. These workshops applied futures methodology to:

Scan for what is possible and probable but not front of mind right now
Challenge business as usual with three scenarios of the future
Identify both ambitious and no regret options that we can do now to prepare for change

The project is also preparing a 'primer' to help teams and agencies in the APS start to use futures methods in their work. Ready in January 2024, it will present methods, case studies and templates to support agencies to undertake more futures thinking, in an APS-specific context and drawing on lessons learned from across the APS.

If you’re interested in applying a futures lens to your work, sign up for project updates through our POSTNormal newsletter at: futures@pmc.gov.au.