Center for Strategic Foresight
Overview
The Center for Strategic Foresight operates within GAO’s Office of Strategic Planning and External Liaison, playing the important role of analyzing trends that will affect federal agencies and programs now and in the future.
The Center currently has eight non-resident Fellows who are leading experts in foresight, planning, and futures thinking from around the world. Collectively, their wide range of experience and expertise spans government agencies, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, and academic institutions. Learn more about the Center’s current Fellows and team (PDF, 4 pages).
Trends
In 2022, GAO staff worked with experts including the Center’s Fellows to identify 12 trends affecting government and society. Read the report here, check out our press release, or watch the video below:
About the Center for Strategic Foresight
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GAO created the Center for Strategic Foresight in 2018 to serve as the agency’s principal hub for identifying, monitoring, and analyzing emerging issues facing policymakers. The Center reflects GAO’s mandate to provide Congress with reliable, fact-based information for overseeing federal agencies and programs.
The Center’s inaugural conference in September 2019 included a variety of experts and Fellows and explore two complex and emerging topics affecting the nation’s future security:
- “Deep space”— the management of space policy across multiple government and private sector organizations; and
- “Deep fakes”—the growing use of AI-generated “synthetic media” to manipulate online and real-world interactions worldwide.
For more information about the conference, read our September 10, 2019 press release.
In 2021, three Fellows from the Center for Strategic Foresight participated in “The Next Century of Accountability: A Conversation with GAO.” At this event, during GAO’s centennial year, Fellows discussed pathways that GAO and other government agencies may take as new and emerging challenges in health, economics and the environment continue to evolve. Watch the panel discussion.
