First-ever technology foresight exercise underlines need for new thinking in federal S&T governance

Ottawa’s first-ever, federal-wide experiment with technology foresight — crystal ball gazing 10 to 25 years out — has yielded a provocative set of reports that could ultimately influence new directions in S&T governance, cross-agency collaboration, and large-scale R&D programs. The reports of the S&T Foresight Pilot Project (STFPP), ostensibly completed this summer, are now being pondered, discussed, and fine tuned by a community-of-practice network of more than 200 future-minded S&T and policy professionals.

Launched at a Science Deputies dinner in March 2002, the technology foresight trial was initiated to fill an important void in federal S&T thinking. Canada is one of the few advanced nations not equipped with a formal program in technology foresight.

But that may change as a result of this exercise. Technology foresight enthusiasts in the 13 participating federal organizations (see table) are hopeful that a formal multi-departmental program will emerge with a modest annual budget. That would allow the technology foresight effort to move beyond its federal confines and extend to all stakeholders in the national system of innovation, according to Jack Smith, STFPP leader in the National Research Council’s (NRC) Office of Technology Foresight.

“The logical next step is to expand the exercise outward from being federally-focussed to being a more inclusive and strategic national effort,” says Smith.

At the same time, he freely admits that there is considerable room for improvement among the federal participants. In his own assessment, Smith writes: STFPP “could have aimed for more — more engagement, better SBDA alignment, a deeper and more inspiring set of prospective collaborative R&D projects, and a stronger resonance with the day to day planning practices of the partner organizations. These remain desirable objectives for the future.”

In the end, Smith figures the exercise was “roughly 65% effective in reaching its full potential, largely because of its focus on tools and events rather than alignment”.

If there is a move toward better alignment, it will likely require more senior level participation, highlighted in the final report as another area of potential improvement.

And the most likely source of top-level buy-in at this point is a recently created ADM-level S&T committee, chaired by Defence R&D Canada chief Dr John Leggat (R$, June 23/03). That group is apparently prospecting new ideas in federal S&T governance, for which technology foresight could play an important front-end role.

“Technology foresight,” Smith says, “could be used to look at new configurations of governments. Many people agree that current departmental structures are somewhat limiting in their horizons and mandates, and that there are more opportunities for collaborative R&D opportunities beyond their mandated boundaries than within them.”

At issue for Ottawa’s future governance architects is the ever-increasing imperative for horizontal management of the federal S&T enterprise. The federal foresight exercise reinforced this point, producing an impressive list of potentially disruptive and convergent technologies that will sweep across multiple departmental mandates. And as the tempo of technology convergence continues to accelerate, particularly in areas like bioinformatics, nanotechnology and quantum computing, the need for horizontal collaboration among federal players, not to mention non-federal stakeholders, will intensify.

NRC FOLLOW-UP ON 2 FRONTS

Among the more positive outcomes of STFPP is an effort by NRC itself to establish more durable foresight initiatives in each of the two umbrella areas identified by the federal participants: geo-strategics and bio-systemics. In the former area, NRC is teaming with Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Space Agency, while in the latter it is aligning with Health Canada. Details of those initiatives have yet to be announced.

Other results of STFPP include:

• connection with 15 international foresight organizations and creation of a network of 200 professionals with foresight awareness and experience;
• elaboration of 10 highly divergent scenarios to 2025 involving participation of non-federal stakeholders; and ,
• derivation of 12 prospective resonant R&D themes, representing a first approximation of candidates for future horizontal collaboration (see table).

Among the less tangible, but equally important outcomes, adds Smith, were the learning achievements, especially in the exploring and testing foresight tools. This encompassed topic selection and scoping; web conferencing; technical expert panels; scenario workshops; and, backcasting techniques.

Particularly impressive were some of the post-mortem comments of the participants in the scenario workshops. Shane Roberts, a senior Department of National Defence analyst for futures and forecasting, praised the effort. “This was one of the most intellectually stimulating and rigorous group exercises that I’ve seen in twenty years of interdepartmental work with the Canadian government”.

And Denzil Doyle, a respected Ottawa-based technology management and finance expert, reminded others outside the federal government of their responsibility. “Those of us who make a living in the high technology sector should understand that there is a lot of fresh thinking going on within government organizations like NRC and we should be prepared to contribute whenever possible.”

Full copies of the reports are downloadable in PDF format at http://nrc.tomoye.com.

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