Advanced Public Sector Strategic Foresight Training Course

Course overview

Public agencies and humanitarian organisations are expected to make defensible long-term decisions while facing climate volatility, demographic change, fiscal pressure, conflict, technological disruption and shifting public expectations. Annual plans and static risk registers rarely reveal how these forces may interact across a policy system. This course equips experienced public-sector professionals to move from monitoring trends to using structured foresight evidence in strategies, programme portfolios, contingency plans and senior decision briefings.

Participants learn to design and run a strategic foresight cycle suited to government and development contexts. They apply horizon scanning, STEEP analysis, weak-signal assessment, driver mapping, critical uncertainty selection, scenario construction, wind-tunnelling and backcasting. The course also addresses how to connect foresight with national development plans, humanitarian preparedness, public investment decisions, risk management and policy design without presenting scenarios as forecasts or detached workshop outputs.

Teaching combines instructor-led technical sessions with a running public-sector case involving a complex development or humanitarian challenge. Participants work in teams to build a foresight evidence base, develop a set of plausible 2035 scenarios, test a current policy or programme against them, and identify no-regret, contingent and adaptive actions. Each participant leaves with a practical Strategic Foresight Application Pack: a scanning framework, driver map, scenario logic, wind-tunnelling results, signposts and a 90-day implementation plan for their own organisation.

The course is designed for policy, planning, resilience, programme and leadership professionals who already work with strategy, evidence, risk or programme delivery and need a rigorous way to prepare institutions for multiple plausible futures.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Design a public-sector strategic foresight cycle linked to policy, planning and budget decisions
• Conduct horizon scanning using a STEEP framework, source assessment criteria and weak-signal logs
• Map systemic drivers, causal relationships and critical uncertainties affecting a development or humanitarian outcome
• Construct a coherent set of plausible scenarios using scenario axes, narratives and quantified assumptions
• Apply wind-tunnelling to test policies, programmes and investment options across alternative futures
• Develop backcasting pathways that translate a preferred future into milestones, owners and policy actions
• Create leading indicators and signposts for monitoring scenario movement and triggering adaptive decisions
• Produce an executive-ready foresight briefing and implementation roadmap for a live organisational challenge

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Policy Directors and Senior Policy Advisers — who must test policy choices against long-term uncertainty
• Strategic Planning Managers — who need to integrate foresight into corporate plans, portfolios and performance cycles
• Humanitarian Preparedness and Anticipatory Action Leads — who must identify emerging risks before crisis thresholds are reached
• Development Programme Managers — who need to make programme designs resilient to political, climate and socioeconomic change
• Public Sector Risk and Resilience Managers — who need to connect strategic risk registers with forward-looking scenarios
• Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Specialists — who need to use signals, assumptions and adaptive learning in programme governance

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have at least three years of experience in public policy, strategic planning, development programming, humanitarian operations, risk, resilience or organisational strategy. The course assumes familiarity with policy or programme cycles, stakeholder analysis, basic risk concepts and interpreting qualitative and quantitative evidence. Participants should be comfortable discussing uncertainty and working with spreadsheets or presentation slides, although no advanced modelling is required. Prior experience of horizon scanning, scenario planning, systems mapping or Power BI is helpful but not required. This is not an introductory policy-planning course; complete beginners should first gain experience in strategy or programme design.

Training methodology

The programme uses short instructor-led briefings followed by structured application in a public-sector development and humanitarian case. Participants practise scanning source triage, driver mapping, scenario logic and policy stress-testing in facilitated teams, with peer challenge focused on evidence quality and decision relevance. Case material reflects issues such as climate displacement, food-system disruption, fiscal constraints and digital public infrastructure. Daily outputs build towards an individual application pack. On the final day, participants present an executive foresight briefing, receive facilitator feedback and convert the work into a 90-day implementation plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Foresight foundations for public decisions

• Strategic foresight versus forecasting, risk management and emergency contingency planning
• Government foresight mandates, decision windows and institutional use cases
• The OECD strategic foresight cycle for public-sector application
• Framing a focal issue, time horizon and unit of analysis
• Systems thinking for development and humanitarian policy challenges
• Assumption audits and cognitive bias checks in planning processes
• Foresight governance, ethics and political neutrality

Workshop: Participants develop a focal-question canvas and assumption audit for a live policy, programme or preparedness challenge.

Day 2: Horizon scanning and driver analysis

• STEEP scanning categories and cross-border trend identification
• Weak signals, emerging issues and trend maturation
• Scanning source triangulation and evidence credibility scoring
• Signal logging, tagging and clustering methods
• Trend impact and uncertainty assessment matrices
• Causal loop mapping for interconnected public-system drivers
• Prioritising critical uncertainties for scenario development

Workshop: Teams create a scored horizon-scanning dashboard and a driver map for the course case challenge.

Day 3: Scenario design for policy and programmes

• Scenario archetypes and selecting a scenario architecture
• Two-axis scenario matrix construction
• Combining critical uncertainties with predetermined elements
• Writing internally consistent scenario narratives
• Quantified assumptions, population data and policy-relevant variables
• Stakeholder behaviour and institutional response modelling
• Scenario plausibility, distinctiveness and decision-usefulness tests

Workshop: Teams build four 2035 scenarios, including scenario headlines, assumptions, implications and stakeholder responses.

Day 4: Testing choices and designing adaptive action

• Policy wind-tunnelling criteria and scoring methods
• Stress-testing programme theories of change
• Robust, no-regret, hedging and contingent policy options
• Backcasting from a preferred public-value outcome
• Adaptive pathways and decision-point sequencing
• Leading indicators, signposts and monitoring thresholds
• Integrating foresight into risk registers, business cases and annual planning

Workshop: Participants wind-tunnel an existing policy or programme and produce an adaptive action pathway with trigger points.

Day 5: Institutionalising foresight and executive communication

• Foresight operating models, roles and facilitation responsibilities
• Embedding scanning routines in policy and programme governance
• Foresight links to national development plans and humanitarian preparedness systems
• Using Power BI dashboards for signals and signpost monitoring
• Executive briefing structures for senior officials and ministers
• Communicating uncertainty without weakening accountability
• Ninety-day adoption plans and measures of foresight use

Workshop: Each participant delivers a five-minute executive briefing and finalises a Strategic Foresight Application Pack for workplace use.

Tools & standards covered

OECD Strategic Foresight Toolkit, UK Government Office for Science Futures Toolkit, ISO 31000:2018 Risk Management, Microsoft Power BI

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions