Glossary of terms
Agency denotes the tools, methods and information resources that enable public servants and organisations to anticipate and innovate in practice.
Alternatives exploration is the ability to consider different policies, service models or modes of intervention that may be in conflict with current strategic intent.
Anticipation is the act of creating actionable knowledge about the future drawing on the existing contextual factors, values and worldviews, assumptions, and range of emerging developments.
Anticipatory innovation is acting on the knowledge about the future by creating something novel that has impact to public values.
Anticipatory innovation governance (AIG) relates to the structures and mechanisms in place that allow and promote anticipatory innovation to occur alongside other types of innovation.
Authorising environment is the system within the public sector that validates anticipatory innovations – provides feedback that there is demand, value, and use for the work.
Complexity in policy making outlines the dependence of systems of people, institutions and dynamic environmental factors that all tend to influence each other making it difficult to ascertain the nature of policy problems and therefore also how to manage them.
Experimentation means creating new knowledge by putting the approach in place with the necessary structures to find out if it works. There are a wide range of experimental methods suited to different purposes from randomised control trials (RCTs) to A/B tests.
Futures literacy is capacity to explore the potential of the present to give rise to the future.
Impact gap lack of use of high-quality futures knowledge in policy making, innovation and strategy due to individual, collective, and institutional limitations.
Policy cycle includes 1) identifying policy priorities 2) drafting the actual policy document, 3) policy implementation; and 4) monitoring implementation and evaluation of the policy’s impacts.
Public sector innovation is a novel approach that is implemented and aimed to achieve impact (such as change in public values).
Phenomenon-based policy making means addressing phenomena (e.g. climate change, social disintegration, urbanisation, and immigration) for which no single part of the system holds full responsibility for and which require the collaborative interaction of different parts of a system.
'Right to Challenge' is a function by which public organisations, local governments and public officials could apply for an exemption from an existing rule, regulation or strategic direction. To be granted this right, applicants have to show how they would be better able to innovate or explore an alternative to deliver improved public outcomes with this 'Right to Challenge'
Sense making is the act of uncovering underlying assumptions about the future and making sense of signals and trends.
Strategic foresight is an established practice of an organisation to constantly perceive, make sense of, and act upon the future as it emerges in the present.
Systems thinking denotes a broad range of methods that help to demonstrate how systems are structured and how they operate. Systems approaches help to reflect on how best to use this knowledge to take action (i.e. design and design thinking) by devising proposals to be tested and implemented as system interventions.
Uncertainty denotes a situation where risks connected to policy problems cannot be calculated (whereas with risk the probability distribution is known or predictable).