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The Head of the Foresight Centre Tea Danilov addressed the international seminar “Towards bridging science and decision-making”.

Global policy community often sees Singapore as an outstanding example of long-term thinking and planning in public policy. This is so because strategic foresight has become a central ingredient of Singapore’s policy process. Experimentation with scenario planning started in the 1980s at the Ministry of Defense. Prime Minister’s office established Scenario Planning Office in 1995.

One of the most important findings in the study “Labour Market 2035” of the Foresight Centre was that understanding the needs of talents and recognising their special skills and knowledge is an important challenge for the future labour market.

We are pleased to invite you to seminar on digital platforms and artificial intelligence. Large Chinese and US digital platforms are shaping the technological frontiers. The American technological hegemony is increasingly challenged by China. Subsequently, technology issues have taken a central role in the trade disputes between China and the United States.

The Head of the Foresight Centre Tea Danilov addressed the international seminar “Towards bridging science and decision-making”. She presented the scenarios on productivity, labour market, and governance that had been based on studies conducted by the Centre, and explained why the Foresight Centre does not propose ready solutions or provide political guidelines.

In 2019, the Foresight Centre plans to carry out three new monitoring projects: the condition of Estonian human resources, the financial well-being of the future elderly, and the evolution of regional development.

While the production of new knowledge remains a corner stone of the academic landscape, a rapidly growing task of scientific community is providing advice to the local and national governments. This challenge calls for further elaboration of the options, best practices and mechanisms of advice in the contemporary society that is oversaturated by information.

As the Estonian pension system is increasingly under public scrutiny for suboptimal performance it is a good opportunity to discuss the Finnish system. The seminar will explore advantages and disadvantes of the Finnish pension system and whether the Finnish system offers any potential lessons for Estonia.

Increasing number of academic and policy books and articles are focusing on how to design and implement foresight in policy setting. However, foresight in policy-making also implies involvement of considerable number external stakeholders who have heterogeneous understanding of the role of strategic foresight. The heterogeneity goes beyond traditional debates among different schools of thought in strategic foresight concerning design and implementation.

The Foresight Centre is proposing four development scenarios of productivity, based on a relevant study. The scenarios take into account the global trends and their impact on Estonian businesses and economic indicators.