An update to our ‘ethical lens for horizon scanning and foresight’ project

We are on a mission to help decision-makers utilise ethics within their policy development process.

Horizon scanning (HS) and foresight is something all policymakers do – either directly as the team leading on it, or indirectly as the team that benefits from its intel. However, we know though our partnership with the NIHR Innovation Observatory that there are very few examples where academic ethical foresight approaches have been adapted for practical application within policymaking. As such, earlier this year, we shared our intention to develop a new policy-tailored 'ethical lens’ for HS and foresight.

Since January, we have conducted interviews with 11 UK civil servants. We asked them what foresight approaches they use, why they choose these and what parameters they need to work within when operationalising futures thinking. These illuminating discussions confirmed that despite policies being driven and shaped by the desire for public benefit, frequent time pressures meant ethical considerations are at risk of being surface level and the ability to include participatory approaches is somewhat limited. This reinforced a need for our ethical lens project, but also made clear that being pragmatic was key. Whatever approaches we develop need to integrate into existing processes. They must not significantly increase workload or require expanded time commitments.

We have also run three workshops with an array of national and international foresight leaders. Each organisation represented has a desire to influence policy decision-making​ and we wanted to know from them what they perceive to be the main barriers for further embedding ethics into the policy development process. These workshop insights aligned with what we had gleaned through our civil servant interviews – there is an assumption that robust ethical analysis takes more time than is available to a policymaker.

To overcome this believed 'lack of time’, we have decided to focus our efforts on providing bespoke ethical foresight methodologies that are tailored to providing policymakers support within the time constraints they work within. We are scoping three approaches.

The first approach seeks to enable rapid surfacing and consideration of ethical implications within the policy development process. The idea of ethically enhancing something akin to a Health Impact Assessment (HIA), which we know is generally well-regarded, and can be shaped to take different lengths of time, appeals to us. Our plan now, is to work with UNESCO, who have created Ethical Impact Assessments specific for AI-based innovations and NHS England to develop a decision template capable of supporting the choices needing to be made about innovations entering the UK’s health and care system.

For our second approach, we turn to regulatory sandboxes, which were created in the financial sector, but are now being used in other ecosystems. The idea of a sandbox is to give space for an innovative technology or advancing research capability to be explored and guided by a regulator (or the regulators) who would likely govern it, were it to come to market. In its essence, a sandbox is meant to help innovators design products that will work within currently accepted parameters. They can also be helpful for exposing where existing regulatory frameworks are no longer fit for purpose and could prevent new technologies from reaching their desirable applications. When considering these two functions, we believe developing an ‘ethically sensitive’ sandbox could assist in embedding ethics into the innovation pipeline and the testing of current regulation. Early conversations suggest there is substantial interest across the UK innovation and regulatory sectors to work with us on this.

Our final approach seeks to build upon work undertaken by Associate Professor Federica Lucivero, who has experience in appraising the moral plausibility of how an innovation could be adopted. We are pleased Federica has secured a BRAID Fellowship to work with us and the Ada Lovelace Institute in the creation of a moral deliberative tool. This will see her revisit how a scenario-based workshop can be better designed and facilitated to help policymakers anticipate the broader societal implications of emerging technologies.

We are excited to enter the next phase of our project and to be working with others to develop these new or adapted approaches. HS and foresight will never be able to predict the future, but we believe by injecting more ethics into its methods we can help policymakers identify the decisions that will result in a future that is more equitable for all.

If you are interested in hearing more or would like to collaborate, please email us on jstone@nuffieldbioethics.org or smccully@nuffieldbioethics.org.