The report provides a brief overview of the insights captured during the second Mutual Learning Event (MLE2) which was held online on September 26, 2024.

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We implemented the ForSI (Foresight for Social Innovation) project with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, with the Unit of Social Innovation. The aim of this collaboration was to identify so-called social time bombs - in our definition, problems that will be significant in the future or are already known today, but not yet sufficiently addressed by the state administration. 

The learning process itself was also a framing goal of this collaboration, where the unit team wanted to learn some foresight methods and implement them into certain processes of the department's work. The project involved desk research, two expert workshops, expert interviews, and also working closely with leading experts on social issues to develop a set of social issue cards. The final list of social time bombs was used by the unit to define calls for grant programs for nonprofits seeking to address diverse problems through social innovation. Foresight was thus used in this case to direct public funds more effectively, thereby addressing the problems that need to be focused on with an eye to the future.

https://www.ceskepriority.cz/foresight#co_je_foresight

From October 2022 to March 2023, we ran a forecasting tournament with a total of 54 questions. Almost all of our forecasting questions were developed in cooperation with 16 different public institutions and ministerial departments. Each institution or department defined its most useful forecasting topics, participated in a workshop to define specific questions with us, and was later provided with the results. This was intended as a proof of concept of one possible approach to incorporating forecasting in public decision-making.

Once defined, our forecasting questions were then posted on a private Metaculus sub-domain (in Czech), where an average of 72 forecasters had the opportunity to address them as they would any other question on Metaculus (median of 18 predictions per user). Throughout the tournament, we produced 16 reports detailing the rationales and forecasts, to be used by the cooperating institutions.
A handful of our partners have already reported acting on the information/judgment presented in our reports. This has concerned, for example, the national foreclosure issue (some 6% of the total population have debts in arrears) where the debt relief process is being redesigned midst strong lobbying and insufficient personal capacities; or the probabilities of outlier scenarios for European macroeconomic development, which was requested by the Slovak Ministry of Finance to help calibrate their existing judgements.

It also seems useful to explore various approaches to grow the number of policymakers with personal experience and skills in forecasting. In our case, we found curiosity and willingness to try forecasting even in unexpected institutional locations (i.e. the Czech R&I funding body). This makes us more confident that the “external forecasts” approach (as compared to building internal prediction tournaments or focusing on advancing forecasting skills of public servants) is worth investigating further precisely because it allows us to detect and draw on this interest irrespective of institutional and seniority distinctions and resource constraints.
While we hope that any readers with an interest in forecasting may find our experience useful, we expect that both this and any future projects of ours make it easier for other teams to work towards similar goals. To that effect, the write-up also contains an Annex of “Methodological Guidelines,” where we outline in more explicit terms the questions and decisions that we found were important to tackle when running the project, and what they may entail.

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The main mission of the project was to create the basis for creating a vision for the development of Prague in the field of innovation and to connect education, research, public space and business in Prague. The purpose of the project was to identify opportunities for research and innovation in relation to the possible future impacts of global megatrends on Prague and the Prague innovation ecosystem. At the same time, it was an effort to strengthen the cooperation of individual actors in the Prague innovation system to formulate a common vision of the innovation strategy of Prague and the directions of future development of research and innovation activities in this region.

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The national research project 4Tech (Development of selected technologies during and after COVID-19 crisis) under the financial support of the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, contract No. TL 040000390. The project 4Tech focusing on four technologies: digitalization and cloud, additive production, telemedicine and digital (distant) forms of education.
The main objective is to capture the impulses induced by the COVID-19 crisis with existing and potential impacts mainly on the rural development drivers.
The research has the following specific objectives:
1) To map extent and forms of the 4 technologies application in the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide with a particular emphasis on the Czech Republic
2) To analyse fulfilment of needs in the respective technical areas and to identify impacts on multi- actors´ collaboration, socio-technical system and society.
3) To explore societal changes of values, attitudes, expectations and concerns referring to the use of the selected technologies during the COVID-19 crisis.
4) To conduct foresight study on technology development in the respective areas with the horizon 2040.

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The project responded to a highly topical and significant need of public administration regarding the availability of timely and relevant information on dynamically developing technological and socio-economic changes for the strategic management of research and innovation policy. Very fast and dynamic changes and their possible impacts need to be predicted and responded to in a timely and flexible manner. Therefore, it is necessary to systematically monitor technological and social trends and identify in advance the resulting opportunities and potential threats to socio-economic development. The aim of the project was to develop a system for continuous monitoring and evaluation of technological trends and collection of signals associated with technological changes with a potential impact on the Czech economy and society. The project output is a unique horizon scanning tool in the Czech environment combining the latest methods in the field of data science with elements of expert assessment based on participatory methods used in prospective studies. The result of the project (and the newly created horizon scanning tool) is the ability to continuously identify and analyze emerging technological trends and emerging technologies and assess their impacts on the Czech economy and society. The expected impact of the project is to strengthen strategic management in public administration by a prospective component of monitoring the medium- and long-term horizon of technological and social development, thereby making the implementation of research and innovation policy in the Czech Republic more efficient.

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The aim of this study was to serve as one of the inputs to the update and to initiate a discussion on the possibilities of updating the Czech republic 2030 strategy. In order to ensure that this strategic document reflects the dynamic developments on the global and domestic scene, mechanisms for regular reviews and updates of the objectives and measures have been proposed. Given the events of the last 3 years (especially the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine), it is relevant to review the relevance of the assumptions regarding the long-term development of the Czech Republic, which served as the basis for the original wording of the strategic objectives and targeting of the document.
The role of České priority was to provide foresight exercises in order to reach two goals:

• Assess the relevance of existing goals: the problems and challenges facing society are changing and so are the definition of objectives for further development. The task of this section is therefore also to determine whether the original ČR 2030 goals are still relevant in the context of change and respond to the major challenges that society is facing and will continue to face in the coming decades.
• Identify blind spots: there may be issues or opportunities that the document does not cover - i.e. blind spots. The next task of this part of the update is to identify such gaps to increase the comprehensiveness of the document.

The project was implemented in the form of workshops, which were attended by experts and representatives of public institutions and ministries. On the basis of pre-prepared scenarios of development, the participants had to identify the resulting challenges, opportunities and areas that have not yet been covered in the CR 2030. The list of these areas was subsequently consulted with representatives of public institutions. These expert consultations were complemented by input from the general public through a creative competition held in September 2022.

https://www.ceskepriority.cz/foresight#co_je_foresight