Strategic Foresight for Intelligence Analysts

About the Program

Specifically designed for the intelligence analyst community, Strategic Foresight for Intelligence Analysts adapts foresight methodology to the intelligence assessment process to provide senior officials with insights on possible futures directly relevant to policy and operations.

Uniquely focusing on analysis and foresight, the program provides a toolkit for analyzing current developments and anticipating their broader consequences, including possible future developments that will require a response. Foresight cannot predict the future, but foresight techniques and creative analysis can reduce the danger of strategic surprise.

During this 3-day program, participants will enhance their capacity to prepare intelligence estimates that anticipate important national, regional and geopolitical changes, and identify possible opportunities for decision-makers. It will help analytical team leaders identify where the use of foresight analysis can usefully enhance the value of short, medium and longer term assessments on intelligence priorities.

Who Should Attend?

This program is designed for intelligence analysts & leaders of intelligence assessment organizations/divisions with the Government of Canada or provincial governments. 

Those who work with allied Canadian intelligence partners with the Government of Canada or provincial governments are invited to apply but will require facilitator approval before joining the program.

What You Will Learn

Program participants will learn foresight processes for geopolitical issues, based on the Policy Horizons Canada methodology. Other topics covered include an abbreviated foresight process for short timeline assessments, as well as approaches to building in opportunities analysis during assessments.

Program Takeaways

Upon completion, program participants will be able to:

• Apply foresight methodologies to intelligence analysis, leading an analyst team, and supporting decision-makers. 
• Conduct foresight exercises related to intelligence analysis.
• Utilize a short scenario model, adapted to the need to produce rapid but useful scenarios outlining future possibilities, as part of an intelligence analytical product.
• Separately use individual steps in the foresight process (domain mapping, scanning, influence cascade, influence diagram, scenario planning, assumption testing) as tools in preparing an intelligence analysis.
• Add opportunity analysis to an intelligence assessment.

Program Facilitators

Greg Fyffe

Facilitator

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Greg Fyffe

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Facilitator

Greg Fyffe served in ADM positions in Solicitor General, Citizenship and Immigration, and the Privy Council Office, where he was Executive Director of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat (2000-2008). After retiring from the Public Service he was a senior fellow with the Advanced Leadership Program of the School of the Public Service (2008-2011). From 2008 to 2014 he was also a Senior Fellow in the Graduate School of International Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Ottawa, where he co-taught a graduate course on intelligence (2009-2016). He is a facilitator with the Public Policy Leadership Program and a co-facilitator for the short course on Strategic Thinking, both at Telfer CEL, and also for a summer course on intelligence. He is the Past President of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies.

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Alex Wilner

Facilitator

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Alex Wilner

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Facilitator

Dr. Alex Wilner is an Associate Professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, and the Director of the Infrastructure Protection and International Security program, at Carleton University. He teaches and writes on strategic foresight, deterrence theory, cybersecurity, national security policy, and emerging technology. His books include Deterring Rational Fanatics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), Deterring Terrorism: Theory and Practice (eds., Stanford University Press, 2012), and Deterrence by Denial: Theory and Practice (Cambria Press, 2021). Among his three dozen journal publications, his research on foresight includes an assessment of Canada’s emerging foresight landscape published in Foresight (2020), a piece on Canadian “Cyber Futures” published with the Defence & Security Foresight Group (2020), and a scientific exploration of scanning for value changes, published in Futures & Foresight Science (2022). Prior to joining Carleton, he was recruited into public service through the Recruitment of Policy Leaders (RPL) program; he worked at Policy Horizons Canada (2014-2015), where he gained invaluable experience applying foresight to public policy. Alongside his academic work, he consultants regularly with government departments seeking to establish foresight capacity. Since 2017, he has trained over 1100 public servants in strategic foresight and has helped several departments, including Environment and Climate Change Canada, GAC, AAFC, SCC, IDRC, NRCan, PHAC, and the Department of Justice, establish foresight units and teams.

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