The European Political Strategy Centre’s Experience with Strategic Foresight: safe-spaces, networks and walking-the-talk
The European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC) is the European Commission’s in-house think tank tasked with providing the President of the Commission and the College of Commissioners with strategic, evidence-based analysis and forward-looking policy advice. To fulfil this mission, Ricardo Borges de Castro, advisor on Strategic Foresight to the EPSC, explains how the EPSC brings foresight to the frontline of EU decision-makers.
By Ricardo Borges de Castro, European Political Strategy Centre, European Commission
Mainstreaming foresight
With regard to the future, policy- and decision-makers start from a level playing field. Unless one has extra-sensorial abilities, no one knows what it holds in store. In fact, the future should always be expressed in plural terms: there are several plausible futures, not a single one. To use Stuart Candy’s clever expression, the future is a ‘landscape of possibilities,’ even if in most settings (maybe with the exception of the private sector) it is more frequently seen as a landscape of challenges.
Yet, strategic foresight and anticipatory governance techniques can help policy- and decision-makers better prepare for the future. And, in today’s more volatile, uncertain and complex world, these approaches and tools are rapidly growing in importance. Once misunderstood or scorned (‘Ah! So you’re the guy with the crystal ball?’) foresight is today being mainstreamed across policy areas. Indeed, many, including in the European Union, are now following in the footsteps of Finland and Singapore — perhaps two of the world’s best examples in the field of governmental foresight.
This was in fact part of the reason for setting up the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC) — the European Commission’s in-house think tank: to provide President Juncker and the College of Commissioners with strategic analysis and long-term policy advice. As an on-demand, service-oriented policy ‘start-up,’ the EPSC has sought, from the outset, to reconcile the usual constraints of day-to-day priorities and politics with long-term strategic thinking and planning. This implies a degree of agility and flexibility that is not necessarily a given in many large public administrations, and that also leads us to innovate in the way strategic foresight methodologies are used — especially with regard to its resource and time-consuming nature.
Key elements in the EPSC’s foresight journey
The EPSC’s strategic foresight journey has been — and continues to be — one of creating safe spaces for open debate, building internal and external networks and walking the talk.
Safe spaces are particularly important because conformity, groupthink and risk-aversion do not mix well with preparing for the future. Creating a safe-space within the Commission, where colleagues from across the institution (and elsewhere) can break the usual silos and hierarchical barriers, and openly brainstorm about policy issues and their potential future implications, has greatly contributed to our mission. Like holding a blank sheet of paper waiting to be filled, not knowing about the future is an ideal starting place to challenge assumptions, push beyond traditional intellectual barriers, and reach uncomfortable no-go areas. The EPSC’s lunch seminars are now a cherished tradition that have helped nurture creativity and out-of-the-box thinking among Commission staff.
Networks are also central to our work. By both reaching in and reaching out, the EPSC is building a network of internal and external experts that are key to exchanging ideas and contributing to the Centre’s intellectual muscle. Whenever possible, rather than only reading a report or a book, we seek to engage with its authors. This gives us a chance to ask questions, to challenge or be challenged by those who know most about a given topic and to see the issues through the lenses of others. The EPSC also regularly takes the extra step to go directly to where the knowledge and experience is and learn from those who lead in their respective fields. The Centre’s study visits to IMEC — which stands for Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum — in Leuven (to learn about state-of-the-art research and innovation) or to the City of Mechelen (to understand how counter-radicalisation strategies can be successful) are just two examples.
By spearheading the Commission’s involvement in the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) — a unique EU inter-institutional [1] collaboration that aims to build preparedness for upcoming challenges and opportunities, the EPSC also contributes to building a global community of foresight practitioners, strategists and planners, from the US, Canada or Brazil to Singapore and Pakistan. The ESPAS Annual Conferences held in Brussels (the next one will be on 28–29 November 2018) act as an incubator and springboard for emerging ideas on the future(s), as well as an advocacy platform towards a ‘culture of preparedness,’ across governments, institutions and societies.
Of course, more than creating a niche within the Commission, the EPSC is dedicated to making strategic foresight more of a mind-set within the institution. And our work starts in-house: we walk the talk. Strategic foresight is mainstreamed across the EPSC’s interdisciplinary team. Trends, horizon scanning, scenarios, visioning, backcasting or even the ‘zoology’ of foresight (i.e. Black Elephants, Grey Swans, Black Swans, etc.) are now part of the group’s vocabulary and work.
EPSC helping others towards strategic foresight
Either through learning by doing or with the help of expert training, the EPSC team has been fully introduced to the methodologies and techniques of foresight. To support and expand this effort beyond EPSC walls, and with the help of Angela Wilkinson — a world-renowned foresight expert — the Centre has published a Strategic Foresight Primer. This readily accessible and easy-to-use guide on strategic foresight — a ‘foresight for dummies’ — explaining the nuts and bolts of the process, can be used by anyone, from the public to the private sector.
As the ECA makes its own inroads into foresight, it can count on the EPSC’s intellectual safe space, be part of its growing network, and ‘walk this walk’ together as the European Union continues to shape its future.
[1] European Commission, European Parliament, Council of the EU, and European External Action Service, with the Committee of the Regions, European Economic and Social Committee and European Investment Bank as observers.
This article was first published on the October 2018 of the ECA Journal. The contents of the interviews and the articles are the sole responsibility of the interviewees and authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Court of Auditors.
