Government Office for Science

The Government Office for Science’s Futures Toolkit was last re-written in 2017 and was thought to need a refresh both of content and design. Specific objectives for the project included supporting the re-write of twelve tools to make them easy for those unfamiliar with Futures work to pick up and use, describing each of the key steps in detail.

SAMI’s Role

The Toolkit is structured around three main sections:

-        An Introduction that takes you through the basics of futures thinking, including identifying a Scoping Question, particular issues of facilitating Futures workshops and ensuring impact. This section also describes seven “pathways” – collections of tools you can use to achieve particular goals.

-        Descriptions of each of the 12 main tools, grouped to answer “What is changing?”, “So what for our future?” and “Now what do we do?”. We wrote, and agreed with the GO-Science team, a description for each tool, covering what the tool does, what the output is, who to involve, and how long it takes to do. The description also identifies what to watch out for and how to include more perspectives. It then walks you through the steps you take to complete the task and a brief case study.

-        A section of “Further materials” discussing widening participation, experiential techniques and more advanced scenario building.

There is a unique Resource Bank that contains draft workshop facilitation worksheets built on SAMI’s own experience of running Futures workshops and designed for you to tailor to your own circumstances.  The Case Study bank includes descriptions of applications of each of the Tools – provided by teams across the UK government and beyond. These are accessed via external links enabling GO-Science to keep them regularly updated.

Outcomes

Tom Wells,  Deputy Director, Technology Insights, Futures & Foresight, said “We are very pleased that with SAMI’s help and comprehensive experience of using Futures tools we now have a fresh, easy to use Futures Toolkit, with a valuable set of supporting resources that Futures teams across Government and beyond can readily use in their explorations of the future.”