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Event Details
*The Future of Government: Exploring Futures through Design and Foresight *
Special issue in the journal: *Policy Design and Practice*
*Guest editors*: Lucy Kimbell and Lucia Vesnic-Alujevic
The rapid growth of social inequalities, climate change, migration, and the use of digital technologies are raising questions about government futures. What do these changes mean for government institutions, citizens and for understanding governance itself? How can democracy be reimagined, renewed and preserved for the future? What approaches and methods enable governments and citizens to anticipate and prepare for such changes? To what extent do design and foresight methodologies enable strategic conversations in the present about future uncertainties facing policy makers?
To contribute to this discussion, this special issue will bring together insights and analysis that shed light on these questions. We aim to build on decades of work by government bodies and business using foresight to explore, analyse, make decisions and prepare to address futures. Such developments have led to the emergence of ‘anticipatory governance’, understood as a capability in public administrations and the wider policy ecosystem in sensing and responding to change. More recently, approaches associated with design (eg design thinking, human-centred design or service
design) are being used within policy development, government services and social innovation.
By bringing together contextual and critical assessments of approaches from both foresight and design used to explore government futures and public policy, this special issue will open up questions about the anticipatory sense-making, creative and learning capabilities required for governments to navigate and adapt to futures and result in new dialogues with researchers in academia, policy analysts, and foresight and design practitioners in government departments, public sector bodies or think tanks.
