With the purpose of supporting the definition of the Science and Technology Strategy 2011 – 2020 by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam, a novel approach to policy and strategy development was introduced, combining foresight techniques alongside traditional strategy programming tools. This novel approach is considered useful for application in developing countries with strong planning traditions.
Download EPF Brief No. 246_Foresight and STI Strategy Development for Vietnam
The Extremadura region has carried out the first regional foresight exercise to help devise a global strategy for the socio-economic
development of the region so as to enhance economic growth. The main agents involved in regional development set out to plan a desirable
future for the region and clearly define investment priorities. The Extremaduran foresight exercise aimed at projecting the position
of key sectors and technologies in the context of future international trends.
Through a renewed mandate in 2005 aimed at strengthening the coordination of research efforts in Europe, the Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR) launched a foresight process to consider the prospects for agriculture in 2015 – 2020 and to help identify political answers to the challenges raised. In July 2006, the European Commission’s Directorate-General Research set up a Foresight Expert Group to support SCAR in identifying long-term research priorities to support a European knowledge-based biosociety. The group was given the remit to formulate possible scenarios for European agriculture in a 20-year perspective allowing for the identification of evidence required (for more robust policy approaches) and innovation needs in the medium to long-term.
This brief presents an overview of major trends and policy options for rural areas. A number of social, technological, economic, environmental and political trends as well as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats will be highlighted, followed by ten major policy options in view of two traditional and conflicting objectives: rural socio-economic development and countryside protection.
The main aim of this initiative was to promote more long-term futures and evidence-based approaches to governance, strategies, and policy development in the higher and further education in Malta under the aegis of the INTERREG IIIC FUTURREG Project. The FUTURREG Project (2005 – 2007) was designed to ensure that regional policies and regional development organisations were informed by high-quality futures tools and participatory processes with significant long-term impacts. This particular FUTURREG subproject/exercise focused on an urgent need to build up the strategic and organizational capacities of institutions in the higher and further education sector and to support them in using futures approaches and foresight tools in developing their strategies in Malta. The results of this work are being used by the Maltese National Commission for Higher Education to define a framework for futureoriented higher and further education strategies using futures approaches.
The UPRIS foresight exercise built upon the Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS) of the Lower Silesia region in Poland. The foresight complemented RIS with a broader based and longer-term know-how for sustainable regional development. It was a participative process involving panels of experts and regional stakeholders, which were to discuss future challenges facing Lower Silesia and possible options for meeting them. The panels elaborated normative scenarios, which served as a basis for developing an action plan for RIS and a plan for trans-regional cooperation. In this way, a cornerstone was laid down for sound, well informed and future-oriented policy-making in Lower Silesia.
This study (which took place in 2004) presents four ‘socio-economic-political scenarios’ designed to stimulate, guide and inform strategic thinking about the future of one of nine English regions, namely the South West. The scenarios portray distinct pictures of the social, political and economic background against which the strategies for the South West can be reviewed and developed. They provide a consistent approach and serve as practical thinking tools. The scenarios are also intended to help organisations in the South West to assess their vulnerability to forces of change and to plan appropriate adaptation strategies.
The RegStrat-project explored new ways of combining foresight with other strategic policy intelligence (SPI) tools, such as technology assessment, evaluation, benchmarking and innovation auditing, to advise regional decision-makers along the whole policycycle on the best ways to apply these tools to design and implement regional research, technological development and innovation (RTDI) policies and programmes, and related RTDI investment strategies. This approach is tested in pilot applications in the six participating regions. Based on this, a guide is developed to support regional decision-makers in applying and combining SPI tools.
“Regional Infrastructure Foresight” enables municipalities, engineers and decision makers in regional sanitation systems to develop a middle- to long-term strategy for a sustainable sanitation infrastructure. Identification of uncertainties and future challenges of the regional infrastructure’s context is carried out in a participatory scenario process. A broad range of possible integrated solutions for the sanitation system is evaluated from different stakeholders’ views. This approach allows handling of uncertainties of frameworks and of complexity of the system to find more adaptive system configurations for a sustainable sanitation system.
