Top officials attend CSPS forum on strategic foresight

September 23, 2016

The Centre for Strategic and Policy Studies (CSPS) yesterday held a forum on Strategic Foresight and Horizon Scanning for Policy Making in Brunei at its building in Gadong.

Around 150 permanent secretaries, chief executive officers, senior officers and executives from the government and private sectors participated in the forum.

In his opening speech, CSPS Executive Director Hj Mohd Rozan Dato Paduka Hj Mohd Yunos, said CSPS, as the premier policy think tank in Brunei, is now working to become an internationally recognised foresight think tank.

He said CSPS will harness on the organisational innovation and design of Anticipatory Governance strategies to fit CSPS’ mandate and serve the needs of the government to achieve Vision 2035.

The executive director said CSPS’ Brunei Futures Initiative is also set up to bring together and foster synergetic relationships between individuals and organisations, including experts, practitioners, researchers and those who have interest in strategic foresight.

A CSPS researcher, Yuzilawati Abdullah, said CSPS will also be running the “Executive Development Workshop Series in Strategic Foresight and Strategic Planning” workshops from November .

It includes the “Strategic Foresight and Horizon Scanning” workshop in November, followed by the “Strategic Planning using Systems Thinking” workshop in January 2017, and the “Action Learning and Evaluation” workshop in March 2017.

At the forum, the participants attended the “Global Waves of Change: Drown, Ride or Become the Wave Maker” talk by the inaugural UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies Professor Sohail Inayatullah, who is also a Melbourne Business School professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast and the Tamkang University.

The participants then attended the “Brunei’s Future Development Options” talk by the CSPS Senior Researcher Dr Ivana Milojevic.

They also participated in the talk conducted by CSPS Chief Researcher Dr Diana Cheong, entitled “Brunei’s Trends and Emerging Issues as Warning Signals for Addressing the Future”.

The forum then proceeded with a question and answer session, where the participants discussed and interacted with presenters.

Some of the participants said the forum provided a good opportunity to learn more on foresight and understand how it could help them in policy making.