The Government Office for Science has appointed DAS as a supplier for a second time to the ‘Futures Framework’, which is designed to support His Majesty’s Government Departments and Agencies to establish Futures capabilities and to conduct Futures work. View the full prospectus here.

Developing Insight

We work in partnership with clients to develop dynamic and rigorously validated and quantified operating models and process simulations which model future trends and trajectories including service demand and supply.

We use systems thinking and system modelling approaches to develop shared insight. We use stakeholder engagement and techniques such as research, horizon scanning, scenario generation (through facilitated workshops), system mapping, scenario quantification, Delphi, Trend analysis and data visualisation to describe and explain the ‘as-is’ information, data, processes, trends and decision/policy drivers. We provide specialist capability in:

Service User and Community Insight – applying a range of techniques, including market modelling and consumer analytics. to understand and better understand, predict and make strategic choices based on the needs of communities and different user groups.
Understanding the current state – we apply advanced statistical analysis to better understand historic trends and the drivers of change to explore where we are and how we got there
Data acquisition and visualisation – we analyse, link, translate and present data and information in formats that provide enhanced understanding, are easy to interpret and support rapid and effective decision making.
Simulation and modelling – we develop dynamic and rigorously validated and quantified system models and process simulations which model service pathways, service demand and supply. This includes machine learning and AI techniques to develop rigorous predictive models.

Turning Insight into Foresight

We use highly innovative approaches to describe what the future might be like using a range of specialist forecasting, visioning and scenario generation methods through to complex modelling and simulation techniques. Our futures modelling supports our clients to forecast trends and the impact of policy and strategy on demand and related issues such as workforce and capability planning. We apply a range of visioning and scenario generation methods through to complex modelling and simulation techniques that allow our clients to consider and evaluate the impact and demands of future scenarios and explore policy options. We support our clients to:

Predict potential future trends and scenarios – we support our clients with clear future foresight through forecasting trends, developing scenarios and their implications for service demand, workforce and resource requirements. We apply Predictive analytics – using a range of machine learning, artificial intelligence and system modelling techniques to understand how the organisation and the environment it operates in will evolve.

Turn insight into foresight – Combining the insights generated from historic analysis of data with predictive modelling to provide bespoke tools to predict the future and allow the impact of policy and organisational decisions to be quantified and explored.

Options, Evaluation and Data-Enabled Decision Support

DAS are experienced in enabling clients to make informed and robust decisions on policy options, strategies and business improvement propositions. Our approach supports informed and robust decision making through rigorous and structured options evaluation approaches and techniques. DAS has facilitated numerous multi-agency workshops, using techniques such as systems modelling, driver analysis and axes of uncertainty. Consensus building has been undertaken using Delphi elicitation processes and used online voting tools to stimulate debate. We do this through:

Stakeholder engagement and facilitation – we design and facilitate workshops and focus groups bringing together stakeholders and experts from related areas and similar contexts. We have expertise in designing and facilitating numerous workshop-based approaches using techniques such as system mapping, deductive scenario generation, driver analysis, Delphi and visioning.
Structured options evaluation – we apply a range of evaluation tools and techniques to create challenge and support robust decisions including: stress-testing, Delphi, and axes of uncertainty.
Data visualisation – describing and explaining complex analysis and insights aligned to the audience knowledge and expectations through presentation and visualisations. We use data visualisation tools, such as R, Python, Tableau and Power BI to allow narrative led exploration of data insights in results workshops. We also produce infographics to summarise complex messages and processes.

Knowledge Transfer, Skills Development and Continuous Improvement

DAS are committed to working in partnership and collaboration with our public and private sector clients. We do this through developing combined client and consultant teams to design, plan and deliver assignments. We identify from the outset areas of development for client team members and ensure that mentoring and support is provided throughout the assignment to achieve that.

We provide lasting value through developing training guides and briefing materials as a standard deliverable as part of our futures and data analytics work. In addition, we deliver handover workshops at the end of assignments to ensure that knowledge transfer is achieved.

DAS is accredited to ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004 standards, and to the Government Cyber Essentials assurance scheme. All DAS assignments require an end of assignment review and evaluation by the client as part of our Quality Management Process.

Our assignments are managed by experienced project managers and all DAS consultants are cleared to SC level as a minimum and are experienced operating in secure environments and handling secure information.

Innovation

A key value of DAS’s company strategy is to develop bespoke and innovative approaches to enhance its consulting propositions and meet its clients’ requirements. DAS consultants are specialists and bring significant experience in developing futures, policy and strategy from across the public and private sector over many years, allowing them to select the most appropriate approach depending on particular project requirements. Recent innovative approaches developed include:

The creation of software to support Field Anomaly Relaxation as an approach to scenario development which provides a workshop-based toolset that can be used rapidly to create dimensions with associated set of states (e.g. from Driver Analysis) to describe different future worlds and the process of excluding incompatible state combinations.
A novel application of MCDA has been deployed to help understand the future trends of segments within a market will develop over time. This focused on providing a combination of hard data and judgment-based criteria (scored through a participatory process) to build consensus on how a market was being disrupted through fragmentation and creation of new categories of products.