Governance of the FTA Community

1. Second International Seville Seminar on Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA): Impacts on policy and decision making28th- 29th September 2006 Governance of the FTA Community Dr. Cristiano CAGNIN, Dr. Fabiana SCAPOLO and Dr. Michael KEENAN European Commission DG JRC-IPTS and PREST (University of Manchester)

2. Governance of the FTA Community Objective The rationale behind the session • Explore the requirements to develop and nurture a sustainable FTA capability • Adopt a network approach: building capacity and synergies • Address the FTA community building and a sense of belonging: establish, consolidate, coordinate and sustain a self-organisation capability • Tackle the need to reconcile diversity and different needs • Explore the possibilities for sharing, monitoring, benchmarking and evaluating FTA impacts on decision making: outcomes and experiences • Raise the issue of whether the FTA community is ready to address global issues and to contribute to global governance

3. Governance of the FTA Community Importance Why address governance of the FTA Community? • In order to: • Be ready to deal with the big global issues of our times and their related uncertainties and complexities • Build the community’s self-organisation capability • Foster practitioners’ ethics • Increase stakeholders’ awareness • Leverage the use of FTA as a decision making support instrument • Address the need of developing possible synergies between providers of FTA education and training • Set out practical pathways, with clear milestones, outlining the roles and actions the FTA community should undertake in the coming years

4. Governance of the FTA Community Actions [1] How? • Building FTA community capacity: • What are appropriate mechanisms for developing the capacity of FTA? How might they most effectively be established? • Building Links across the FTA Community: • What are the most effective ways to strengthen the links across the FTA community? • Evaluation and Monitoring: • What are the most appropriate mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation of FTA? How might they most effectively be implemented?

5. Governance of the FTA Community Actions [2] How? • Customer-Client Relations: • In what way can FTA dramatically enhance its achievements and perceived value for policy- and decision-makers? • Quality and Ethical Standards: • What are appropriate quality and ethical standards for FTA? How might they most effectively be developed and applied? • Addressing Global Problems: • Is there a need, an opportunity and a basis for organising the FTA community to be able to provide a 'rapid response' capability to identify and address major emerging issues?

6. Governance of the FTA Community Initial Inputs [1] Building FTA community capacity • FTA education and training for undergraduates, graduates and professionals • Specialised training for FTA specialists and non-specialists • FTA research: conferences, injecting FTA into mainstream research disciplines, FTA as a category for research funding • FTA framework and institutional settings: why is FTA more used or influential in some countries than in others? • Network building; professional association; global reach? • Public awareness and participation, and better communication? • Repositioning FTA as 'Strategic Intelligence'? Future orientation? • Strengths: support of the Commission, methodologies, Transnational SPI and foresight programs and initiatives

7. Governance of the FTA Community Initial Inputs [2] Building Links across the FTA Community • Building linkages between and strengths in FTA in the various geographical regions, including both FTA and non-FTA communities • Sufficient appropriate FTA journals, electronic newsletters? Link FTA into scientific and engineering disciplines? Link private and public? • How to find or foster similar interests among individuals and organisations in such network? Themes by region (e.g. energy)? • International projects, e-group and web-based network? Coordinator (one at global level or various at regional level)? • Key: to link stakeholders, such as sponsors, clients (e.g. policy makers), experts and citizens • Yearly EU Foresight conference organised in the country of EU presidency? (APEC Center for Technology Foresight – 2/3 years)

8. Governance of the FTA Community Initial Inputs [3] Evaluation and Monitoring • Difficulties in assessing 'success', effectiveness or impacts (direct and indirect) • How can evaluation and monitoring be organised and integrated into the process? How to embed continual learning? Cooperation? • What are previous experiences from evaluations in FTA? Who can be an 'independent' evaluator in FTA? Is there a role for benchmarking? • How can we capture, store and make widely available the processes, results and experiences from previous FTA exercises? (database? publication of evaluations? different language? role of media?) • How can evaluation be linked with the ethical standards? • Is there a need to establish an annual review report of FTA projects, applications and evaluations? How? Transparency? Quality?

9. Governance of the FTA Community Initial Inputs [4] Customer-Client Relations • Do clients really know about FTA and what it could provide? Do they know what they want? How to increase perceived FTA value? • What are the needs of clients and how to capture them? Different needs between private and public? • Do FTA practitioners really understand clients and their needs, as well as the policy processes in which they hope to have an input? • How can FTA market its services more effectively and get more visibility? • What forms and outputs of FTA are most amenable to policy application? • What participatory role should be played by the client in the course of an FTA exercise? • How to deal with time horizons and requirements of policy-makers?

10. Governance of the FTA Community Initial Inputs [5] Quality and Ethical Standards • Should FTA quality and ethical standards be market driven? Is there a market requirement? What is the value of reputation? • Is there a need to build consensus to ensure widespread use and applicability of FTA international quality and ethical standards? • Is there a need to develop a management framework aimed at quality in FTA processes, methods and products/services to be assessed, monitored and continually improved? • To what extent is a standard nomenclature and set of procedures required? Can standards be generic (any context and for any organisation)? • What are the ethical issues raised by and in FTA? Are there criteria for futures that should not be examined because of the ethical futures they raise?

11. Governance of the FTA Community Initial Inputs [6] Addressing Global Problems • Is there a need to have a proactive approach to be ready to answer global problems and issues (i.e. nanotechnologies, global warming, migration, aging, education, conflict resolution, etc)? If so, how? • How to assess the impact of global issues and which role the FTA community could play? • How could the FTA community have sufficient credibility to deal with these issues? What effects could be expected? • Who could sponsor international problem-oriented FTA studies? • Should we only aim to provide an ‘early warning’ system or can the FTA community directly influence decisions beyond identifying emerging issues? How?

12. Governance of the FTA Community Follow Up and Initial Proposition FTA Community Active Role • What are the actions needed to move forward? • Which of these actions will require a collective response? • How should the FTA community organise and mobilize itself? • Which organisations and individuals could play an active role? • Which roles would these be? What could be the role of JRC-IPTS? • Function as a gathering point by holding a bi-annual FTA Seminar • Function as a node of the FTA community’s network that plays a full and essential part in future activities • Develop training and knowledge sharing workshops trying to advance the discipline • But, is this enough? There is a limited budget for actions so how can we foster the development and continuity of an active FTA community?

13. Governance of the FTA Community Thank You! Working Groups • What is expected? • Active participation • Openness and imaginative thinking • Concrete and practical proposals for action • Commitment to / assignment of roles • How it will be organised? • 6 groups organised along thematic issues • Facilitator (Chair) and a rapporteur • 2 sessions either side of lunch • Plenary report back and debate • Identify lead organisations and follow up actions • Buen trabajo!