Issue Proving value, retaining talent and integrating AI challenge government foresight units

Summary

At a 2024 UN Public Administration Network webinar, researchers from the Singapore centre openly described the challenges it faces. Because the results of foresight can only be measured over the long term, it is hard to demonstrate the organization's value with short-term performance indicators. Recruiting and retaining people with futures research capability is also difficult. How to integrate new technologies such as AI and big data into futures methodology has emerged as a further challenge. The author treats this self-reflective stance as another feature that distinguishes the centre from an ordinary bureaucracy. The same questions of evaluation, talent and technology integration confront any government trying to institutionalize foresight.