This third chapter focusses on the questions and the chosen methods to answer them.
What are the questions & issues to be answered in this study, what criteria do we use to choose a method of working, what approach do we opt for, what participants do we select and finally, what means do we have at disposal ?
This series of publications are extracted from my final paper written within the frame of university certificate on foresight (UCL – Sept 2018)
We will orient our thinking to be both credible and useful, and will therefore focus on :
Among the various possible approaches, i.e. exploratory, strategic, visionary, procedural or normative, we opted for the exploratory approach. Indeed, we wish to consider a variety of possible futures, without restrictions.
We chose to take the best of each world – in our opinion – for our study. We have therefore borrowed various elements from each of the approaches:
This is a sectoral domain by differentiation with a territorial domain – for example the future of a region – or an organization – for example the future of company X.
The participants of choice are industry experts, including public security experts, as the two are inseparable.
We extend the expert field to certain European bodies. Indeed, although the focus of the study is on the Belgian market, it is part of a larger ecosystem and, by definition, internal security also faces threats from outside. Therefore, following the example of what Defence is already doing, we should focus on a “European” Security.
As the sponsor is the security managers of large companies, they represent the users of security products and services and are therefore important stakeholders.
As for citizens, we have deliberately decided not to consult them during this exercise but to “take the temperature” via the results of studies carried out by other bodies such as Bruxelles Prévention et Sécurité. Those results regarding the feeling of insecurity have been published in 2019.
The survey is fragmented here, since it only covers Brussels Region. For the sake of completeness, the results of studies from the other regions should therefore be brought together and analyzed.
Two questions remain to be answered:
A good network of actors will help to collect HUMINT. In this case, we can rely on long term contacts established, thanks to the dynamism of ECSA as well as that of the Royal Military School (Alumni HESD – ATHENA) and the Intel conferences.
We therefore rely on these interpersonal relationships to obtain interviews.
As far as the political actors are concerned, at the period of the study we were on a pre-election period which was favorable – not sure what we can say about the current one… 😉
Indeed, when the parties are in the middle of a campaign, they are more inclined to explain their program … provided they have it “already” ready and that security has been covered as a topic…
Sources, Useful links & Resources
ECSA – European Corporate Security Association www.ecsa-eu.org
BPS (Bruxelles Prévention & Sécurité), Résultats de l’enquête régionale de sécurité 2018 – “Sentiment d’insécurité et victimation vécus par les résidents, navetteurs et touristes en Région de Bruxelles-Capitale, Bruxelles, 2019 »