Guidance

Futures toolkit for policy-makers and analysts

The Futures Toolkit provides a set of tools and techniques to help government officials use long-term strategic thinking in policy making.

Documents

Futures Toolkit: tools for strategic futures for policy-makers and analysts

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email accessible.formats@cabinetoffice.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Details

The Futures Toolkit provides a set of tools to help embed long-term strategic thinking within the policy process, and explains how to ensure they have real impact. It is intended for policy officials and analysts across government.

The toolkit summarises what futures thinking is, how it can be used in policy making and describes a series of tools that can be used by policy makers to manage in uncertainty and identify future actions. The tools vary in the expertise needed to use them, with tools for beginners through to tools for experts. Experts from government and industry have contributed to its development and have provided case studies to illustrate the tools.

This is a first version of this toolkit: we are continuing to test and improve it. We would welcome your feedback.

Published 8 July 2014
Last updated 16 January 2018 + show all updates
  1. Updated version of the toolkit published (edition 1.0).

  2. First published.