About Programs Fellowship News Calendar
Business as usual for governments has gone from standard planning, with deviations to manage crises as they arise, to having to confront multiple interlinked crises as their new normal. Governments often utilize such confusion to implement policies with little foresight, sometimes making them less resilient to the next critical issue or even sparking a new crisis.
How can governments function – and thrive – in this new reality? How can they develop – and implement – policy, under these circumstances? And in what ways can strategic foresight help prepare governments not just for specific emerging issues but for multiple emerging matters from environmental change, new technological developments, social disruptions, and geopolitical security?
The annual invitation-only retreat of the Public Sector Strategy Network enables senior public sector leaders to speak openly among peers about major disruptive forces confronting governments. To respond and plan effectively and to have concrete lessons to share within their respective mandates, participants can compare experiences in off-the-record conversations as to how their respective departments and institutions are addressing these challenges.
Participants come from different geographies, sectors, and specialist areas, in order to help each other approach issues holistically from diverse angles.
The ability of government to carry out its role effectively in a world of increasingly complex challenges is under pressure. In the face of shifting public expectations, political unrest and budget cuts, civil servants require new networks, skills, knowledge and strategic foresight.
The Public Sector Strategy Network builds a supportive alliance of engaged senior public servants and connects them with cross-sectoral innovators. Facilitating the exchange of ideas, connections and knowledge, the Network is designed as a dynamic platform for outstanding leaders in public sector strategy to take advantage of new opportunities and be best prepared for future challenges.
The Network’s keystone event is its invitation-only Annual Foresight Retreat, critical for developing future partnerships, fostering new relationships, and accelerating innovation. The Retreat’s agenda each year is directly tailored to participants’ interests and inputs. Members can pool their insights and tap into each others’ expertise, ensuring that in-person meetings can be deeper and more reflective.
The Network also offers additional exclusive opportunities for participating members, countries, and institutions to engage with each other and have informal exchanges on key topics throughout the year. Network membership enables participants to shape the meeting agenda to generate impact for individuals, institutions, and ideas. Government representatives already active in the Network have benefited from sharing cross-border experience to expand their knowledge base to better implement domestic agendas.
The Office of Strategic Affairs in the Abu Dhabi government launched the initiative in 2010 with a series of annual workshops and roundtables to develop relationships across the international strategic policy community. The decision to create a year-round Public Sector Strategy Network came in 2017. Salzburg Global Seminar serves as the Network’s politically and geographically independent convener, in partnership with Apolitical.
The Annual Foresight Retreat is curated as a highly-interactive roundtable harnessing many years’ experience of conference design best practice. Discussions take place in plenary as well as in small breakout groups in order to take deep dives on the issues. Specific case studies build on the experience of participants.
The Annual Retreat is fully residential, with all accommodations and meals on site at Hartwell House, Vale of Aylesbury, UK. This historic venue provides an inspiring setting for rest, renewal, and perspective-taking. Adherence to the Chatham House Rule ensures an open and free exchange among peers in privacy, trust, and openness.
This year’s retreat will include short presentations about challenges and questions facing participants’ countries, leading to a strategy discussion about what is or is not working, how it relates to building trust; what the government’s role is or should be (and what are the roles of non-state actors); and what the future holds on a range of critical topics.
The Annual Foresight Retreat has four goals:
The program will bring together a group of no more than 30 participants. We prioritize participants from small and mid-sized countries on the forefront of strategic foresight and innovation. Participants will include: