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NCBNational Capability Benchmark

All deliveries

Singapore, anticipation

Centre for Strategic Futures, foresight inside government

Singapore established the Centre for Strategic Futures in 2009 inside the Prime Minister's Office strategy system to study blind spots, run long-term futures research and develop foresight methods.

Singaporesince 2009still operatingbears on Government foresight capacity

2,009 year, year the centre for strategic futures was established, 2009. Centre for Strategic Futures, Who we are, retrieved 2026-08-30.

The move, and what it needed

A central strategy unit gives government a standing place to examine emerging risks and challenge assumptions before those risks become immediate policy demands.

Preconditions

  • A centre of government willing to receive uncomfortable analysis
  • Access to policy teams that can act on long-horizon findings
  • Methods and networks that keep foresight connected to evidence

Limits: Creating a foresight unit shows a formal capability for examining uncertainty, not whether its work changes budgets, policies or decisions. The centre describes its own mandate and does not publish a counterfactual for decisions made without it.

This record describes what Singapore delivered. It is linked to Government foresight capacity because no comparable dataset measures that capability. It does not affect the score or confidence.

More from Singapore

2 other deliveries from this country.

  • SkillsFuture Credit

    Singapore gave every citizen aged 25 and over an individual training account in 2016 and keeps topping it up, and in 2024 260,000 Singaporeans spent credit on courses, up 35 percent on the year before.

  • Housing and Development Board, public housing at scale

    Singapore set up the Housing and Development Board in 1960 to address a severe housing shortage, and it built more than 21,000 flats within its first three years.

Every delivery from Singapore

The same gap elsewhere

3 deliveries linked to Government foresight capacity in other countries.

  • Embrapa, a fifty-year bet on tropical agriculture

    Brazil created a public agricultural research corporation in 1973 to make acidic tropical soils productive, kept it funded across every change of government since, and cereal production rose from 46.5 million tonnes in 2000 to 155.9 million in 2023.

  • The Delta Programme and its fund

    The Netherlands legislated a standing programme against flooding and fresh-water shortage, run by an independent Delta Commissioner and paid from a dedicated Delta Fund that expects 27.4 billion euros to be available through 2050.

  • CGEE, the strategic studies center

    Created in 2001, the Centro de Gestão e Estudos Estratégicos was designed to produce prospective studies and long-term recommendations for Brazilian science, technology and innovation policy, with 273 researchers and specialists signing its creation record.

Every delivery under anticipation