Tl;dr: In Czech Priorities, a think tank based in Prague, together with Metaculus, we recently ran a complex forecasting tournament funded by EAIF to support Czech policymaking. Today, we are publishing a write-up of our findings from the tournament, as well as supplementary materials to help any groups of forecasters looking to do the same.

The article was also cross-posted on EA Forum.
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From October 2022 to March 2023, we ran a forecasting tournament with a total of 54 questions. In March, we have discussed some of our preliminary findings in this post.

Almost all of our forecasting questions were developed in cooperation with 16 different public institutions and ministerial departments. Each institution or department defined its most useful forecasting topics, participated in a workshop to define specific questions with us, and was later provided with the results. This was intended as a proof of concept of one possible approach to incorporating forecasting in public decision-making.

Once defined, our forecasting questions were then posted on a private Metaculus sub-domain (in Czech language), where an average of 72 forecasters had the opportunity to address them as they would any other question on Metaculus (median of 18 predictions per user). Throughout the tournament, we produced 16 reports detailing the rationales and forecasts, to be used by the cooperating institutions. The institutions and their topics were listed in our previous post.

This approach, in combination with multiple media appearances, also allowed us to strengthen our position as one of the leading Czech institutions with expertise in foresight methods.

We've created a write-up detailing our steps in both talking to institutions and managing the tournament with its specifics. Here are our five overarching takeaways for groups of forecasters who want to make an impact through policymaking, and some specific lessons learned:

General takeaways

Develop partnerships with policymakers across various policy areas. Finding policymakers eager to try analytical innovations is usually not the main bottleneck.
Diversify your portfolio of foresight methods. Particularly in the EU, policymakers are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of foresight. Their familiarity with methods such as scenario planning or horizon scanning can grant more inroads into the policy process for f

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