News

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.

The Foresight Centre at the Estonian Parliament created five public sector governance scenarios for Estonia which paint different pictures of digitalization.

The study into the future of the labour market, conducted by the Foresight Centre, has been going on for nearly one and a half year, and is coming to a close. The final report of the project, “Labour Market 2035”, including four scenarios, has been completed.

Strategic foresight has gained considerable currency during the last decades, said Meelis Kitsing, Head of Research, Foresight Centre.

Working relationships have diversified and a number of new forms of work have emerged next to the classical ones. This makes the relationship increasingly difficult to define, and leaves a significant amount of workers without work related protection and social security guarantees.