Current projectJoint project

An ethical lens for horizon scanning and foresight 

Developing or adapting horizon scanning and foresight approaches to help decision-makers embed ethics within policy development.

We are working to develop a policy-tailored ‘ethical lens’ for horizon scanning (HS) and foresight that will enable decision-makers to bring ethical consideration more overtly into the policy development processes.  

In 2024, we consulted with civil servants from across UK Government to better understand how they work, and the common HS and foresight exercises they undertake. We also convened a large number of international foresight and futures experts to review how ethical consideration is currently embedded within HS and foresight approaches.  

Taking these learnings together, we heard a clear message: none of the current HS and foresight approaches enable decision-makers to substantively identify or explore the ethical implications of emerging technologies. Also, there is an assumption that robust ethical analysis takes more time than is available to a policymaker.  

These insights have spurred us on to develop ethically-grounded HS and foresight methodologies that are optimised for the time and budget constraints that policymakers need to work within. 

In this ‘ethical lens’ project we are developing three approaches:  

• A rapid ethical assessment tool, which will enable ethical implications within an acute policy development process to be surfaced and considered at pace. Dr Marija Antanavičiūtė, who joins us on secondment from the University of Birmingham is leading on the development of this tool. 

• An ethically sensitive sandbox, which will assist regulators in their design of agile and pro-innovation frameworks that can help science thrive while maintaining public trust. The idea of a sandbox is to give space for an innovative technology or advancing research capability to be explored and guided by the regulator/s who would govern it, if it came to market. 

• A moral deliberative tool, which offers a new way to deliver and facilitate future scenarios workshops, enabling participants to grapple with ethical considerations and apply them to different situations. This approach can support policymakers to anticipate the broader societal implications of emerging technologies. Associate Professor Federica Lucivero, from the University of Oxford’s Ethox centre is currently working with us and the Ada Lovelace Institute through a BRAID Fellowship to create this tool.