Technology Assessment

One main task of the Committee is to organize and coordinate the technology assessment work for the purposes of the parliament.
 

In 2006 and 2007 the Parliament of Finland is celebrating its 100th anniversary under the theme "The right to vote – trust in law. One hundred years of Finnish democracy".
In 2005 and in connection to this celebration the Committee for the Future of the Parliament started two projects under the theme "Future(s) of democracy".

1) In the first one futures researcher Dr. Mika Mannermaa was asked in cooperation with the committee to prepare a report on this theme. The general goal of the project was to create views of the development prospects of models of democracies, their challenges and opportunities in the Finnish society and in the world in the long-range futures (2017) and beyond that (2107). In that report the big waves of societal changes, futures of representative vs. direct models of democracy, new ICT in democratic decision-making (virtual democracies, etc.), possibility of global democratic governance, citizenship vs. meritocracy and new ideologies in the future are dealt with. The report will be finished by the summer, and it will be published in Finnish, English and Swedish in the Fall of 2006.

2) The Committee for the Future also decided to produce an international collection of articles written by distinguished futures researchers around the world. The articles have been collected as one volume with the working title "Democracy and Futures". 
The aim of the international project was to let professional futures-thinkers to approach the theme of democracy and futures from different cultural, scientific, technological, geographical and other perspectives. New ideas and personal well-argued views were presented.
The volume was edited by Dr. Mika Mannermaa, Prof. Jim Dator from the University of Hawaii and Dr. Paula Tiihonen, Committee counsel of the Committee for the Future.
The experts in futures studies, who made contributions to the book include Dr. Walt Anderson (USA), Dr. Clement Bezold (USA), Prof. Riccardo Cinquegrani (Italy), Prof. Jim Dator (USA), Director Jerome Glenn (USA), Dr. Fabienne Goux-Baudiment (France), Prof. Linda Groff (USA), Prof. Bernd Hamm (Germany), Prof. Sohail Inayatullah (Pakistan-Australia), Dr. Mika Mannermaa (Finland), Prof. Eleonora Masini (Italy), Prof. Peter Mettler (Germany), Takuya Murata (Japan), Director Ruben Nelson (Canada), Prof. Erzsébet Nováky – Dr. István Kappéter (Hungary), Prof. Francisco Sagasti (Peru), Yongseok Seo –Youngsook Park Harmsen (Korea), and Prof. Bart van Steenbergen (The Netherlands).
The collection will be published in July 2006, and an international conference, where the results will be dealt with will be arranged in Finland in January 2007.
 

For further information, please contact Researcher, Mrs Ulrica Gabrielsson, Committee for the Future ulrica.gabrielsson@parliament.fi or Project Manager, Dr. Osmo Kuusi  osmo.kuusi@vatt.fi
 

Technoloy Assessment Reports: