Futures Toolkit: tools for strategic futures for policymakers and analysts
The Futures Toolkit provides a set of tools to help you develop policies and strategies that are robust in the face of an uncertain future.
Government departments often need to make decisions that will affect people for decades. But the future is unpredictable – technology, society and the environment can change in ways that we do not expect. Traditional forecasting, which relies on past trends, is insufficient because it assumes the world will stay broadly the same. Policymakers needed a way to think ahead and prepare for different possibilities.
The Government Office for Science developed the Futures Toolkit – a practical guide with 12 tools that help people explore “what might happen” and plan for it. The tools include methods including Horizon Scanning (spotting early signs of change), Scenarios (imagining different future worlds), and Policy Stress-Testing (exploring whether a policy would work under different conditions). The toolkit also offers “pathways” – step-by-step combinations of tools for specific goals, such as creating a shared vision or testing policy options quickly. It encourages involving diverse voices, challenging assumptions, and thinking beyond the short term.
Using these tools helps policymakers make smarter, more resilient decisions. Instead of being caught off guard by sudden changes, they can prepare for a range of possible futures. For example, the Food Standards Agency used the toolkit’s Delphi method (a tool for gathering expert opinions anonymously to reach consensus and measure diversity of views) to gather expert views on how the UK food system might change over the next 10 years. This helped shape their research priorities. Other organisations have used the toolkit to plan for issues including climate change, technology and the economy. The main benefit is better long-term planning, which means policies are more likely to succeed even when the world changes in unexpected ways.
Find out more about the Futures Toolkit here.