FUTURES IN GOVERNMENT

Abstract

Public decisionmakers have necessarily been interested in the future since the early beginnings of organized society, relying on a variety of religious, mystic, intuitive and random devices for making hard decisions in the face of uncertainty. Therefore, interest in the future as such constitutes no innovation in government. What is new, are three converging and interrelated developments concerning the future dimensions of governmental activities, namely: (a) increasing necessity to take the future better into account; (b) increasing possibility to take the future better into account; and (c) increasing demand to meet needs of the future. Developments in knowledge on how to forsee probable futures and how better to absorb unavoidable and extensive uncertainty by making our present actions less sensitive to unpredictable futures, do improve possibilities (relative to the rate of change) to take the future better into account.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1968
Accession Number
AD0673832

Entities

People

  • Yehezkel Dror

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Communication Systems
  • Connective Tissue
  • Governments
  • International Relations
  • Labor Unions
  • Manpower
  • Mass Media
  • New York
  • Planning Programming Budgeting
  • Public Administration
  • Public Policy
  • Social Sciences
  • Systems Analysis
  • Systems Approach
  • Training
  • Uncertainty
  • United States

Readers

  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.
  • Systems Analysis and Design