Research Topics

Author／Yi Ling Roy Ngerng, Assistant Researcher, RSPRC  

1. The 30-Year History of Singapore's Foresight Planning

Singapore has been conducting foresight planning for 30 years, and such "long-term planning" has been credited by Singapore's Civil Service head Peter Ong for Singapore's development from a "colonial entrepot with limited industry, and few urban developments" to a "metropolis" (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2015b). But scenario planning did not take root initially on a national level – it started as an "experiment" at Singapore's Ministry of Defense (MINDEF) in the late 1980s (Public Service Division, 2011) because MINDEF decided to plan their acquisition cycles for defense procurement over a "long-term horizon" of 10 to 15 years, in order to align their acquisition plans with strategic outcomes at the national level (MINDEF Singapore, n.d.). In 1991, the Singapore Public Service followed suit to use scenario planning, which after two years of experimental use, "was approved by the government as a tool for long-term policy and strategic development" (Public Service Division, 2011). Singapore's scenario planning was initially modelled after the experience of the Royal Dutch Shell's Planning Department from the 1970s and 1980s. Singapore also joined the Global Business Network (GBN), a consulting firm that provides scenario planning expertise for businesses, to learn from them. Singapore was its only country-member for "a long time" (Global Business Network, n.d.). In this article, I will first describe the process in which scenario planning in Singapore is conducted, and offer a critic at the end.

In 1995, the Scenario Planning Office (SPO) was set up at the Prime Minister Office (PMO), to develop national scenarios and coordinate policy development with other government agencies (Public Service Division, 2011). It was renamed the Strategic Policy Office in 2003 to "reflect the strengthened links between foresight work and strategy formulation" (Centre for Strategic Futures, n.d.b). In 2004, Singapore then launched the Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) program, a set of digital tools that they developed to scan for strategic issues, and also developed the Whole-of-Government Integrated Risk Management (WOG-IRM) to identify risks which could impact on strategic outcomes, both of which were intended to complement scenario planning, and their work incorporated under the National Security Coordination Centre (NSCC) in 2008 for national security policy coordination (Asia Data Week, 2017), and also under the Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF) which was set up under the SPO in 2009 to expand "futures thinking in the public sector" (Public Service Division, n.d.). In 2015, CSF was moved back to the PMO, to the Public Service Division under the Strategy Group (Centre for Strategic Futures, n.d.b).

 

Table 1: Timeline of Singapore's Foresight Planning

Timeline	Event
1995	The Scenario Planning Office (SPO) was set up at the Prime Minister Office (PMO).
2003	The Scenario Planning Office was renamed the Strategic Policy Office (SPO).
2004	The Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) program was launched.
2004	The Whole-of-Government Integrated Risk Management (WOG-IRM) was developed.
2009	The Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF) was established under the SPO.
2015	The CSF was moved back to the PMO, to the Public Service Division under the Strategy Group.

 

 

2. Singapore's Foresight Planning Process

Singapore uses a three-step 'Foresight-to-Strategy (F2S)' process for its foresight planning (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2017b):

1. 'Scenario Planning Plus (SP+)' at the broadest national level
2. the identification of 'Emerging Strategic Issues (ESI)' as a "complement to scenario planning" (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2018b)
3. deep dives, in which more in-depth research is conducted on ESIs

Whereas scenario planning is conducted once every three to five years, ESIs are conducted on a shorter time frame, and deep dives are conducted based on selected ESIs (Public Service Division, 2011). Singapore developed its first set of national scenarios in 1997 and has since developed six of them, with the latest in 2016 (Futures Centre, 2017). Each scenario planning takes two years to plan, and is aligned with Singapore's strategic and budget planning (Public Service Division, 2011). As national scenario planning is conducted over a longer time period and the broad scenarios developed might not allow the government to respond quick enough to sudden events that arise, the ESI process is therefore used to identify smaller but issues of strategic importance. Singapore has conducted three ESI exercises, with the first one done with GBN in 2009. The first two exercises took about a year to conduct but from the third ESI onwards, Singapore decided to shorten the time period to conduct these exercises to every quarter, so as to be able to formulate responses to current events with more immediacy. Deep dives would be conducted on ESIs which were ranked as being of higher importance among government agencies.

But what would constitute events that should be included as scenario planning and what would ESI comprise, you might ask? According to CSF, humans live in a complicated world which is "complex and unordered", and thus results in black swans or black elephants (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2013). Black swans are referred to as "rare, large-impact, hard-to-predict and discontinuous event beyond the realm of normal expectations" and black elephants are described as problems that are "actually visible to everyone, but [which] no one wants to deal with it, and so they pretend it is not there", but when the problem "blows up", "they all feign surprise and shock, behaving as if it were a black swan." (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2017b)

To illustrate, CSF refers to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2011, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, and the 2008 subprime financial crisis as black swans which can be sudden yet with a massive impact (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2018b). But terrorism is also referred to as a black elephant, and the Singapore government speaks from experience on this: while developing the third set of national scenarios in 2001 and at the same time, trying to convince stakeholders that terrorism could become a likely future scenario, the 9/11 attacks happened, and from being seen as a black elephant, Singapore was confronted with the "uncomfortable" reality that terrorism had turned into a black swan. To identify black elephants, Singapore uses scenario planning, while the ESI process is used to identify sudden black swan events.

3. How Singapore Does Its National Scenario Planning

Singapore's national scenario planning, or SP+, was developed by the CSF in 2009 and is an "integrated framework" which includes scenario planning, as well as RAHS, WOG-IRM" (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2013).

 

Figure 1: Scenario Planning Plus (SP+) is an integrated framework comprising scenario planning, risk management, and risk assessment and horizon scanning
Source: Peter Ho's Presentation on Singapore's Scenario Planning (Ho, P, 2013)

 

SP+ comprises scenario planning tools that can be used in six steps (Centre for Strategic Futures, n.d.a):

 

Figure 2: Singapore's Scenario Planning Plus (SP+) is a set of foresight tools, which can be used in the six steps of (1) focal area identification, (2) environmental scanning, (3) sense making, (4) development of possible futures, (5) strategy designing, and (6) tracking and monitoring of strategies
Source: Center for Strategic Futures (Centre for Strategic Futures, n.d.a)

 

1. Defining Focus: the first step to SP+ involves trying to understand the broad problem areas that Singapore may face, and to study their trends, so that priority areas could be developed accordingly for scenario planning (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2018b; Centre for Strategic Futures, n.d.a; Public Service Division, 2011). To do so, interviews are conducted with key decision makers in the Singapore government. The Cynefin framework developed by Dave Snowden is one of the tools used here to help decision-makers classify problems into whether they are simple, complicated, complex or chaotic, in order to understand how the problem areas should be dealt with.
2. Environmental Scanning: horizon scanning is the next step, to identify issues within these problem areas which have yet to cropped up but which could create a significant impact, and to study these issues to "understand [their] nature and pace of change, and to identify potential challenges and opportunities". "Thought leaders in various sectors" are engaged to help identify issues at this stage.
3. Sense making: this step involves "clarifying and articulating an organisation's understanding of complex situations in order to build situational awareness and shared understanding within the organisation" (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2012). Driving Forces Analysis is used as a tool here to understand the drivers that could trigger change to existing trends. CSF identifies two types of driving forces: (i) predetermined forces which are more "stable and predictable" and (ii) critical uncertainties where "a range of plausible future trajectories exists" (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2012). During the previous national scenario planning exercise, public officers were interviewed to identify these drivers of change.
4. Developing Possible Futures: After the driving forces are developed, scenarios would be created. Singapore however does not publicly detail the steps it takes to produce the scenarios. The scenarios which are developed would later be communicated to decision makers, using stories, videos and games, to allow decision makers to understand the lives of the people affected by these scenarios, so that decisions made could be more informed by the needs of ordinary citizens, or so is its stated aims.
5. Designing Strategies: Strategy development is included as part of Singapore's scenario planning so that strategies developed would flow seamlessly from the scenarios developed. Tools such as War-Gaming are used, where fictional scenario games enable "strategies and conflict simulations" to be explored. Relevant government agencies would be involved to conduct these strategy reviews together with the Strategy Group.
6. Monitoring: Finally, indicators are developed to measure the implementation of these strategies, such as by using Early Warning Systems as a tool, to "analyse risks, monitor and warn of potential critical threats, and build a response capability to these threats".

4. Singapore's 6^th National Scenario: National Scenarios 2035 (NS2035)

The last scenario planning in 2016 produced the National Scenarios 2035 (NS2035), where 80 public officers from over 30 government agencies were brought together to develop the scenarios based on six domains (social, economic, governance, environment and resources, technology, and geopolitics and security). However, there are limited details in terms of how the scenarios were developed and how they were translated into strategies, as Singapore no longer releases the scenarios it created publicly (Futures Centre, 2017). Kenneth Paul Tan, Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, explained: "[the scenario-planning] efforts were, however, still limited to a technocratic elite [...] Furthermore, the scenarios are generally not available for the public to read, while a very small number are presented to the public in a simplified and sterilized form." (Tan, 2016) Therefore information on these scenarios can only be obtained by proxy: even though the scenarios are not publicly available, the driving forces used to develop the scenarios have however been made public, in the form of Driving Forces Cards 2035 (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2015a). In general, based on past scenario planning, about 20 driving forces would be developed, with three to four scenarios created from them (Public Service Division, 2016).

 

Figure 3: Example of a Driving Force Card
Source: Foresight 2017 (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2017b)

 

The Driving Forces Cards 2035 were structured into four categories, with four to five driving forces in each of category, for a total of 18 driving forces. Each of these cards provide a brief description of what the driving force is about, as well as the "highlighted critical uncertainties, and suggested possible trajectories and implications for Singapore" (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2018b). The driving forces and their respective summary descriptions are detailed in Table 2.

 

Table 2: Driving Forces Cards 2035

Driving Forces	Description
Future of Technology
Human Augmentation	As prices drop due to growing efficacy for human augmentation, how will their adoption be mediated by economic, political and ethical factors and will certain non-technical skills such as empathy, still be relevant?
Human Substitution	Human substitution technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms and autonomous vehicles will replace some of human's capabilities, but will humans be displaced and will there be push back from governments, unions and society?
Info-Flows – Control and Opportunities	As non-government actors have more control over data, will the government still be able to control information and maintain their dominance over digital companies?
The Future of the Internet	Will the Internet remain open or fragmentized and how secure will data be, and will the government be able to catch up with the technological abilities of non-government organizations?
Future of the Economy
Changing Aspirations amidst Economic Uncertainty	With higher education and aspirations, how can these be managed and will they result in social instability?
Circulating Talent	The government has been trying to attract foreign workers due to declining fertility and an aging population, but will it be able to continue to offer higher wages to foreigners and will Singapore maintain its position as a hub?
Digital Barons and Talent Superhubs	Digital companies will be able to grow without relying on physical offices, but will Singapore be able to cultivate more entrepreneurs and talents to attract these companies to stay?
Innovating Platforms	Businesses will need to integrate different technologies to create new business models but which "combinations of disciplines" will result in greater innovation, and which innovations will be more profitable?
People as Business	How will the sharing economy change work arrangements and how will "citizens respond to new labor arrangements"?
Future of the Global Environment
Changing Global Order	How will global powers evolve and how can middle powers grow their influence in the changing international space, and how will radicalization in the region affect stability?
Climate Change and the Global Carbon Regime	How will climate change "affect Singapore's economic competitiveness" and will "Singapore be held to greater commitments over time," and also what will happen if "climate change projections exceed worst-case scenarios"?
Evolution of the Water-Energy-Food-Land Nexus	How will Singapore's reliance on external resources be affected by external shocks and how will new technologies and alternative energy systems impact on Singapore?
Overruled Globally	As the international order changes, how can "new technologies change the influence of international rules"?
Future of Singaporean Society
Ageing in Singapore	With an aging population, how can the economy adapt, and how will the role of the family as a caregiver to the elderly change?
Changing Texture of Singaporean Society	As Singapore faces more ideological contestation in terms of politics and rights, how will these be managed?
National Identity	How will Singapore's national identity change and will it be affected by the socio-economic stratification in Singapore.
Singapore's Urban Governance	How can Singapore continue to attract talent and how can Singapore manage its risk exposure from being connected, and how do new technologies help Singapore become more connected and create more economic opportunities?
The Lived Experience in Singapore	How will new technologies change the way people live in Singapore and will growing inequality lead to the "emergence of two tiers of living experiences between the haves and have-nots"?

Source: Driving Forces Cards 2035 (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2015a)

 

5. The Inadequacy of Singapore's Scenario Planning

I. The Neglect of the Social Dimension

However, the Driving Forces Cards 2035 are by no means indicative of Singapore's strategy. From the outside, these cards ask pertinent questions on issues, but what matters are still the exact strategies that are eventually executed. Even though the process in how the scenarios were created and how the strategies were developed is not revealed, we can look at the actual policies that are being implemented as a guide to the efficacy of Singapore's scenario planning. A critic of Singapore's scenario planning is its overemphasis on economic development, based on the publicly available information. There is little corresponding information on how social or technological development is done for their own merits, except for how they could benefit the economy. The Driving Forces Cards 2035 were also shared with Singapore's Committee on the Future Economy (CFE), which was set up to "drive the growth and transformation of Singapore's economy for the future". The committee produced the Report of the Committee on the Future Economy, and even though it is primarily developed with the economy in mind, it still provides an insight to the Singapore government's priorities on other developmental aspects, such as on social development. No doubt the report writes that it aims for an "inclusive" strategy, aimed at ensuring "sustainable wage growth", but the exact implementation says otherwise (Ministry of Trade and Industry, 2017). For example, Singapore's government talks about "improving work conditions" through the Progressive Wage Model, but the lowest wage of S$1,120 (NT$25,530) paid under this model (Ministry of Manpower, 2019) is still lower than the minimum wage of all the Western European and Anglo-Saxon countries, as well as with East Asian countries with a similar cost of living as Singapore (Eurostat Statistics Explained, 2019), and is equivalent to Malta and Portugal which have GDP per capita only half or one-third that of Singapore (International Monetary Fund, 2019). And even as Singapore claims its "tax system" to be "progressive", it has been acknowledged that Singapore's fiscal system is a "regressive" one (Asher et al., 2017a). In addition, the Strategy Group has also released roadmaps on how Singapore wants to address Singapore's energy future (Strategy Group, 2014), based on developing, solar photovoltaic, carbon capture and storage/utilization, green data centers, energy efficiency and industry energy efficiency. However, in the media release on Singapore's energy roadmaps, "sustain[ing] economic growth" was also the goal for "develop[ing] cost-competitive energy solutions".

Now, the Singapore government also uses the STEEP analysis as one of its scenario planning tools, which the UNDP calls "the most usual approach" to conducting horizon scanning in its 'Foresight Manual' (United Nations Development Programme, 2018). STEEP involves scanning for issues from the Social (S), Technological (T), Economic (E), Environmental (E) and Political (P) domains, but even as there are traces of such a framework being used by the government, the outcomes suggest that Singapore's planning is still centered around the Economic domain. In fact, in his book, 'The Evolution of Strategic Foresight', Futures Platform Content Director Tuomo Kuosa explained that Singapore's Ministry of Finance has a central role in Singapore's foresight system and even established a 'Strategic Foresight Unit (SFU)' to "ensure that the benefits of the whole of government futures thinking […] are utilized in the Ministry of Finance's long term budget considerations" (Kuosa, 2016a). But the lack of corresponding strategies to bring social development to parity is glaring. For example, how does Singapore intend to enhance its wages or social protection system to the level of other similarly high-income countries? As such, even though the Driving Forces Card 2035 ask important questions about raising wages and the CFE recommendations talk about "sustainable wage growth", it is clear the government is only paying lip service to these. Therefore, appraising Singapore's scenario and strategic planning requires being able to discern when the government words should only be taken with a pinch of salt.

II. The Lack of Transparency in Singapore's Scenario Planning

Another question pertains to the secrecy behind why Singapore has been unwilling to share its scenario planning process and the outcomes. To be clear, the Singapore government publishes a glossary on the scenario planning tools that it uses (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2012), and it also publishes the Driving Forces Cards 2035, even as the final strategies Singapore developed might not follow directly from the questions asked in the cards, and it is also not clear how the planning tools are actually used for Singapore's scenario planning.

The Singapore government also publishes biannual reports of its foresight experiences, and while they do not detail Singapore's scenario planning process, there are selected ESI exercises which are discussed (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2017a). One example is the 'Our Singapore Conversation (OSC)' which was held in 2012 and 2013, which the government described as "broad-based, free-ranging dialogue, between the Government and citizens, and among citizens from all walks of life, on every aspect of the Singaporean condition" (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2014). Subsequently, the government published a report from the dialogues, which is a compilation of the interviews conducted with over 4,000 respondents. The report spent one page out of 48 pages explaining that the ideas collated will not "get sucked into a black hole", but will be fed into a reviews of the policies (REACH, n.d.).

But the same question remains: there are no clear outcomes in what strategies or specific policy solutions were developed from such dialogues. While state-controlled media showered praises on OSC, independent media viewed it less favorably. Robin Low, a founder of a nanotechnology company in the United States, said: "many people are skeptical about the initiative's effectiveness to understand the average Singaporeans" because OSC seemed like an attempt by the government to "forc[e] communications into approved mediums and moderating views" such as the OSC, while ignoring the viewpoints of other "conversations happen[ing] on the Internet" (The Independent Singapore, 2013). Augustine Low wrote in independent media The Online Citizen that after OSC, the government also held another SF Future conversation in 2015 and said it would hold another one in 2018, but these seemed like "exercise[s] in futility" which only produced "motherhood statements" (The Online Citizen, 2018). He remarked sarcastically: "The hope is that the government does not go through the motion, just so they can declare to Singaporeans we took the trouble to consult you and your voices are heard."

III. The Lack of Public Engagement in Singapore's Scenario Planning

Another criticism of Singapore's scenario planning is its lack of public and civil society engagement. Aaron Maniam, who was the first head of CSF was reported by International Futures Forum Director Graham Leicester as having said that, "Singapore is increasingly using 'citizen's juries' to get a broader range of opinion and experience into decision-making", and this might even involve "anything from 70 to 700 citizens", but to be clear, Singaporeans are engaged not for scenario planning at the national level (International Futures Forum, 2019). The public is only engaged during ESI exercises, and as can be seen, it is not clear what the strategies developed from such exercises are, and these exercises have faced criticisms in not having an actual impact on improving the lives of the citizens. The G20 Insights Platform explains that, "the pre-requisite for effective scenario methodology is broad heterogeneity of the stakeholders group," which should include not only policymakers and public officials", but also "representatives of civil society, social groups and industry, as well as scholars and experts from different fields", in order to "overcome conventional modes of thinking" (G20 Insights Platform, 2017). However, Singapore's national scenario planning is confined to decision makers in the government, with occasion involvement of academics from government think tanks and industry actors, which brings to question whether Singapore's scenario planning can truly be considered scenario planning, and whether it can really "challenge the conformist thinking" it claims to want to do (Civil Service College, 2012), not least because social actors like non-governmental organizations and activists have largely not been involved and have a history of being politically persecuted by the Singapore government, some of whom have been advocates of social issues in Singapore. As such, even as CSF purports using participatory foresight, to "involve citizens in envisioning the future", it is difficult to take them seriously (Centre for Strategic Futures, 2018a).

But here's the kicker: when Singapore developed its first set of national scenarios in 1997, it did briefly introduce them (National Archives of Singapore, n.d.). Two scenarios were developed, the first, 'Hotel Singapore', where people could lose their sense of attachment to Singapore if it no longer felt like home because "the situation became too challenging or disadvantageous to them", and "A Home Divided", where Singapore becomes fractured "along lines of ethnicity, religion, income, ideology, and interests." (Tan, 2016) The scenarios were planned for a 20-year period, but the irony is that 20 years on, the scenarios which were feared could develop have in fact happened: in his parliamentary speech before he left government at the last general election, former member of parliament Inderjit Singh quoted a 30-year-old man who said: "[Singapore] seems more and more like a 6 star hotel – emphasized by the huge amount of imported wealth and labour – where everything is perfect if you can pay the high room rates." (The Online Citizen, 2014) As it is, Singapore today has also become one of the most unequal developed country in terms of income (Global Finance Magazine, 2018), and also ranks in the bottom 10 in the world in its willingness to develop policies to tackle income inequality (Oxfam et al., n.d.). Singapore's showiness of its scenario planning model would be pristine, if not because the Singapore government has made a mockery out of the scenarios they themselves developed.

6. Conclusion

To conclude, Singapore's foresight planning has a history of about 30 years, and is conducted on various levels, in terms of scenario planning at the national level and the identification of emergent issues at a more micro level which according to Singapore's depiction, allows it to develop long term strategies whilst at the same time, deal with the unpredictable shocks to the system. However, as Singapore does not outline the steps it takes to develop its scenarios and strategies, it is not possible for other countries to learn from their process. From the scant information available on Singapore's scenario planning, Singapore's scenario planning strategy is heavily tilted towards the economic domain, while in the social domain, wages remain low à-vis the country's national income and the country lacks the comprehensive social protection coverage seen in other high-income countries. In addition, there is the question of whether Singapore's overemphasis in the economic domain is socially sustainable, and whether the lack of transparency and public participation in Singapore's scenario and strategy development, which is concentrated in the hands of a few elites, is beneficial for its citizenry, which thus calls into question as to the authenticity of Singapore's "foresight" planning.

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