Forum

The EFP Manual for Policy Support shall be updated on a regular basis. For this purpose we would like to invite experts to take part in the discussion of the following questions:

- What kind of forward-looking intellligence to policy makers need / want?
- How to align policy objectives, the rationale of policy making process with added value generated from FLA?

- Community-building: What expertise is wanted by policy makers?
Which institutions could be interesting? Which regions are of interest?
- Foresight brief production: Which specific topics are of interest to policy makers to be presented in a brief?
- Foresight mapping: What topics would you like to have mapped?
- Policy workshops: What do policy makers want to learn from these workshops? Insights into challenges or issues, finding or assess solutions, or what else? Should participants be involved more in the preparations? Selected themes so far are very broad, maybe better to focus more? How to decide on selection of themes for the workshop?

We are looking forward to your interesting contribution to any of these issues.

Of course one can not have "evidence about the future", but the conclusions one draws about possible developments from current situations into future situations should be based on reliable information and reasonable scientific, technological, economic and social assumptions. I would also be careful about the term "vision" as it can be misinterpreted - the word has some connotation with "utopia". Instead assessments may be rather made along the lines of scientific and technological possibility according to current knowledge about natural laws and science, economic possibility (costs, economic situation, financial support, investments), resources (how much material, knowledge and work is necessary) and socio-political desirability (do people want it or not?). Maybe it is all more about preparedness for possible events, developments and scenarios. Also one needs to ask if the analysis is about possible problems and challenges (gaps) or new possibilities that may be available in the future.