Head of Futures Advice

Contents

• Location
• About the job
• Benefits
• Things you need to know
• Apply and further information

Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, London, Salford

GO-Science

The Government Office for Science works at the heart of Government, ensuring policies and decisions are informed by the best scientific evidence and strategic long-term thinking. It’s an exciting time to join the organisation; we have outstanding and high-profile positions providing you an opportunity to inform and influence policy-making and the systems for use of science and engineering across government. If you are highly motivated and looking for your next career challenge we want to hear from you.

This is an exciting and varied position leading the development of government’s use of futures and foresight techniques. The successful candidate will play a significant role in improving national policies that will ultimately support wellbeing, boost the economy and protect national security.

This role is for a specialist Futures adviser to provide advice and support to government organisations to use futures thinking and techniques to develop strategies and policies. The role leads the advice function in the wider Futures Team in GO Science, which works to ensure government is able to respond effectively to future challenges and opportunities. You will work closely with senior colleagues in Cabinet Office, BEIS, HMT and other departments to help them get real value from futures methods.

The role would provide a great platform to develop a career in government. You’ll build your profile across departments, contribute to new strategies and see first-hand how government makes policy. It’s a great place from which to put your knowledge of futures tools to good use – helping develop strategies and policies which are more resilient to the future.

We are a small, friendly team building government capability in futures approaches to help deliver long-term, resilient policy and strategy. Demand for our services is growing. More information can be found here:

This is a great opportunity to join GO-Science – we have grown in size, scope and profile since the pandemic whilst remaining a lively, supportive and friendly place to work. We’re an inclusive team, with a variety of working patterns already. We’ll work together to make different working styles work. We’re proud of the commitment GO Science has made to diversity & inclusion.

You will lead our advice service to colleagues across Government, providing some of that advice themselves – supporting colleagues to understand what they can do, helping them plan work and facilitating futures exercises. You will also help nurture relationships and broker support from the community of horizon scanners across Government and external specialists.

GO Science itself is a centre of excellence for futures in Government. This role plays a major role in our internationally-recognised Foresight programme, supporting project teams to build futures methods into their work. It also coordinates our Futures Framework – a procurement framework through which colleagues in government can access external expertise more quickly. Promoting the framework and helping colleagues to get their commission right will be a growing area of work.

Key Responsibilities are:

• Providing specialist Futures advice to teams across government, including one-to-one advice
• Designing and delivering facilitated workshops and regular introduction sessions.
• Working with the Cabinet Office Joint Data and Analysis Centre to develop and implement a foresight system that builds long-term thinking into the heart of government decision making
• Managing a procurement framework of Futures suppliers which can be accessed by public sector organisations
• Oversight of the Futures team Project Management Office and line management of the SEO PMO lead
• Lead contact for a cross-government network of embedded Futures experts
• Supporting development and delivery of tools, training and resources to support futures work
• Leading continuous improvement of the team’s performance, for example by bringing in new…