The Futurium - a Foresight Platform for Evidence-Based and Participatory Policymaking

This paper presents the Futurium platform used by Digital Futures, a foresightproject launched by the European Commission's Directorate General for CommunicationsNetworks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT). Futurium was initiallydeveloped with the primary purpose of hosting and curating visions and policy ideasgenerated by Digital Futures (Digital Futures was launched in July 2011 by DGCONNECT's Director General Robert Madelin following a prior DG CONNECTexercise called Digital Science.). However, it has turned into a platform on which toexperiment with new policymaking models based on scientific evidence and stakeholderparticipation, referred to in this paper as 'Policy Making 3.0'. The platform hosts anonline foresight toolkit to facilitate the joint creation of ideas to help design futurepolicies. It leverages the potential of social networks, open data, semantic and knowledgemining technologies as well as participatory brainstorming techniques to engagestakeholders and harness their views and creativity to better inform policies that matterto them. The Futurium distinguishes between different variables, reflecting the emotionalvs. rational mindsets of the participants, and offers the possibility to frame theengagement and co-creation process into multiple phases of a workflow. Futurium wasdeveloped to support Digital Futures, but its open architecture makes it easily adaptableto any policymaking/decision-making context where thinking ahead, participation,scientific evidence and agility are needed. Futurium is an early prototype implementationof the Policy Making 3.0 model, which is a long-term vision requiring furtherinvestigation and experimentation. The Futurium production website can be seen here:ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/futurium.