How can government prepare for unknown risks?
Horizon scanning is a technique deployed insufficiently within government
Risk is ever-present within our decision-making processes. Yet it is often unexplainable. The subconscious calculations we do on a daily basis regarding what food to eat and what to wear out in the December cold are examples of how individuals navigate the likelihood of life.
But individuals alone will not always possess sufficient information to make important, large-scale decisions. In particular, individuals can rarely fathom population-level events which build as a result of the interconnected nodes in a globalised world.
Take food supply chains for example. Most consumers are now so far removed from the agricultural process that the killing of animals for their food is very much an afterthought. They are emotionally removed from the pain caused. They are physically distant from the conditions that make the spread of zoonotic diseases more likely. The information is there online if you look for it, but the daily grind often means people have other stuff to prioritise.
But it isn’t just individuals lacking adequate information. States (and markets) can fall prey to this too. A well-functioning state will be able to coordinate different stakeholder groups and institutions in order to build a clear mosaic of a problem area, and then help shape the legal and policy arena to address said problem. But this requires the ability to think in systems. To understand the interaction between economic, social, technical and biological nodes and how they can influence the short, medium and long term future.
One innovative governmental approach to systems thinking is known as horizon scanning.
According to a 2012 review of horizon scanning, this can be defined as
“A systematic examination of information to identify potential threats, risks, emerging issues and opportunities, beyond the Parliamentary term, allowing for better preparedness and the incorporation of mitigation and exploitation into the policy making process.”
According to the UK Futures Toolkit, horizon scanning aims:
To gather information about emerging trends and developments that could have an impact on the policy or strategy area in the future
To explore how these trends and developments might combine and what impact they might have
To involve a range of people in futures thinking and increase their knowledge and insight about the changing policy environment.
This is a productive process. Often, 10 authors each producing one scan per week will produce 60 scans (or more) over 6 weeks. You will need a project manager to gather the individual scans and to organise them. Horizon Scanning is relatively straightforward but does rely on intuition and insight – which can feel counterintuitive to those who are more practiced in evidence-based strategic thinking.
One of the biggest challenges in this process is being able to identify weak signals. These are trends which are on the long term horizon but aren’t immediately clear in the short term horizon.
These techniques can be used to anticipate and respond to a whole range of events, from students not being able to pay their debts, to wargaming conflict in the South China Sea.
Many governments claim to use these tools. In Britain, horizon scanning is conducted by bodies such as the Forestry Commission, Health Security Agency, and Higher Education England.
You would think that horizon scanning could have helped with the pandemic. Indeed, the Human Animal Infections and Risk Surveillance group in Public Health England are supposed to horizon scan for emerging public health threats.
Sure, they couldn’t have stopped Covid-19 from becoming a global threat, but horizon scanning could have enabled a better response once COVID-19 eventually hit UK shores.
But in many ways, COVID-19 was an exemplary example of state failure. Horizon scanning, however little had been done, failed to embed the capacity to respond effectively to the emerging pandemic. Even Singapore, the country regarded by many as the most advanced in terms of horizon scanning capabilities, had not deployed these techniques widely across and outside of government.
Keeping horizon scanning as a method for a few senior civil servants in a sweaty back-office has multiple problems.
Firstly, diversity in a team of scanners is crucial. It enables different ways of approaching problems and prevents groupthink/cultish formations so that better decision-making can take place.
For the scanning and anticipation stage, without a diverse group of backgrounds and experiences you will have a weaker pool of talent working on scanning, meaning weak signals will be identified less.
But this diversity problem also has effects for the response stage. If you want to integrate effective responses to these big uncertain challenges, you need to be able to operationalise at all levels of all government departments. You need to be able to create the conditions for markets, business, and civil society to be able to respond too.
Three further points on what can make a good horizon scanning team. The best scanners stick to their day job as it reduces cult mentalities forming. Scanners should also not just be human - algorithms can play a good role in the initial sifting of potentially important information through scraping social media and the internet.
At risk of going full-Cummings, I do wonder what dialogue could be formed between horizon scanners in government and the forecasting community. The likes of Metaculus do an incredibly good job in predicting the trajectory of a whole bunch of important events. Just check out their latest thoughts on Omicron to see what you make of them.
That being said, horizon scanning isn’t about predicting the future. It is about adopting a mindset that enables the challenging of assumptions and creation of credible options to deal with potential problems.
Horizon scanning is one of many tools within the futures thinking toolkit. Governments say they use them. Most policy advising civil servants won’t have heard of these techniques. That needs to change if we are serious about policy helping to form a social contract between generations. To responding to the challenges of tomorrow, today.
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