Use of foresight in the U.S. federal government

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The need for better foresight is arising mainly from an across-the-board acceleration and increasing complexity of change. In this situation, new challenges and opportunities emerge with disconcerting speed and old priorities, policies, and institutional arrangements become obsolete. For example, it is important to get a better understanding of the potential impacts of emerging developments in artificial intelligence and automation on employment in order to develop policies that promote efficient labour markets for the benefit of workers, employers and society as a whole. Foresight is also needed to focus greater attention on "slow threats" where small, hardly noticeable changes add up over time to produce large impacts. For example, it is estimated that half the world's topsoil has been lost over the past 150 years, most of that in the last 50 years. Continuation of this trend should be a matter of great concern, but soil erosion is a such a slow and insidious process that it seldom receives the attention it deserves in the media or in government. Our survey shows that the kind of foresight activity needed to deal with challenges like these has a foothold in the U.S. federal government. More foresight activity is occurring in federal agencies than is widely appreciated and some of this activity is becoming sophisticated and influential. But in many other agencies foresight is still fragile or nonexistent. Greater appreciation of the benefits of improving foresight is critical for developing it into a normal, institutionalized aspect of government decision making.

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