# Speculative Bureaucracies and Administrative Futurism This note gathers speculative ideas, scenarios, and conceptual sketches about alternative futures of public administration and institutional design. It serves as a sandbox for thinking beyond what exists — imagining how bureaucracies *could* look, function, or feel. Some entries are inspired by fiction, art, or thought experiments; others emerge from the limits of current systems, asking “what if” instead of “what is”. ## Entries ### Inspiration **The Ministry for Meaning** is a speculative design project launched in 2025 by the Swedish agency Doberman, in collaboration with the Swedish Public Employment Service. Conceived as an [exercise in institutional imagination](https://sally.doberman.co/public-sector/), the project envisions what a public employment agency might become in 2033, in a world where artificial intelligence has fundamentally reshaped the meaning and structure of work. In this future, traditional job centers have been reimagined as _meaning hubs_ - physical and social spaces designed not to match CVs with vacancies, but to help people navigate uncertainty, explore nonlinear life paths and cultivate a sense of purpose. ^ministry-of-meaning **Administrative Biodiversity** is the name of an [exploratory initiative](https://biodiversite-administrative.fr/) launched by Banque des Territoires and [[Vraiment Vraiment]]. It starts from the recognition that the climate crisis is affecting all living systems and demands public action for biodiversity. The project challenges existing practices and recurring imaginaries in public service, aiming to improve what exists — and to imagine what could come next. ^administrative-biodiversity - As part of this initiative, _[microparliaments](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78zMc6tiSLk&list=PLAf9iFEf4gFLGRHif9CnK5r5DfLGLjwm3&index=3)_ have been developed as local spaces for dialogue where frontline public workers (like social workers and digital mediators) can come together to share real-life cases, identify bottlenecks in the user journey, co-design context-specific solutions, and test scalable actions. **The Ministry for the Future** is a fictional organization from the 2020 novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. In the story, it’s a UN agency tasked with defending the interests of future generations in the fight against climate change. ^ministry-for-the-future ### Possible ideas - _The Ministry of Unfinished Projects_ - _The Department of Slowness and Silence_ - _AI Ombudsman: A machine for complaints that listens but never responds_ ### Curiosity cabinet **[[2025-05-31]]**: Discovered this initiative in a [recent paper](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-025-01673-z) that explores how climate models often limit our imagination of sustainable futures. Through an artistic collaboration, the project encouraged modelers to reflect more critically on the futures they simulate and the values behind them - inviting a more open, speculative approach to climate scenarios. **[[2025-05-24]]**: Read the [[Vraiment Vraiment]] newsletter to find out about a speculative public policy project created for the [Soleil.s](https://mudac.ch/en/exhibitions/solar-biennale/) exhibition at MUDAC in Lausanne. The project imagines the Cantonal Day Office, a fictional public service designed to address daylight as a public health issue. The project includes three main components: An office for certifying individual chronotypes, recognising whether someone is a morning or evening person and adapting work or school schedules accordingly. A unit for adapting housing to the sun’s path, offering advice on reorganising living spaces and routines based on solar exposure, such as having breakfast outside or claiming one's 'right to light' on a shared balcony. An information centre on health and daylight needs, where people can generate their own 'preferential day access card' to guide new forms of courtesy and spatial use in public life. I loved how it blends poetic provocation with concrete reflections on what a daylight-sensitive state might look like - something that resonates especially strongly with me, having discovered just how dependent one can be on sunlight after moving to Germany. **[[2025-05-18]]**: I accidentally discovered [Bureaucritics](https://bureaucritics.substack.com/), a quarterly newsletter edited by [Alexandra Irimia](https://www.iglk.uni-bonn.de/de/forschung/forschungsprojekte/bureaucratic-fiction) and [Jonathan Foster](https://www.su.se/english/profiles/jofo1519-1.398657). It explores how fiction, film, and visual culture engage with bureaucracy, office work, and institutional forms. The newsletter features research, events, and publications on what the editors call "bureaucratic fiction." Irimia, a Humboldt Fellow, is leading a project examining narratives and images of administration in contemporary literature and cinema. She is analyzing how bureaucratic processes influence aesthetic forms and social imaginaries. Foster, a recent graduate of Stockholm University, studies how 19th-century British authors portrayed officialdom and contributed to public discussions about statecraft. The newsletter also connects with projects like [Imaginart](https://imaginart.site/), which examines how artists in regions such as South Africa, Indonesia, and Palestine respond to institutional failure through collective experiments. **[[2025-05-06]]**: saw [[Romain Beaucher]] post about an upcoming event in Paris on Tuesday, May 13th for "[AP 2042](https://autrementautrement.com/articles/yoan-ollivier-avec-ap-2042-chercher-dans-la-fiction-les-ingredients-de-la-resilience-de-laction-publique)". This is a creative methodology (a workshop format and card game) was originally developed by the design agency dear to my heart, [[Vraiment Vraiment]]. It was designed to counter the typically short-sighted and budget-driven approaches to government reform by encouraging more imaginative, long-term thinking about the future of public policies and services. The specific event is an evening workshop entitled "AP 2042 // Les métiers de l'action publique du futur" (AP 2042 // The public action professions of the future), hosted at the [Speculative Futures Paris](https://www.linkedin.com/company/speculative-futures-paris). During this session, participants will use the AP 2042 framework, including scenario-based games and collaborative discussions, to collectively envision and design what the roles, skills and narratives within public administration might look like in the future. **[[2025-05-09]]**: found out about [[United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)|UNDP]]'s [Pasifika Futures Forum](https://www.undp.org/pacific/pasifika-futures) in Suva (9-15 May 2025), which will bring together policymakers and experts to explore strategic foresight for Pacific Island countries - including a special roundtable on the future of the civil service, as well as interactive workshops on embedding foresight in government institutions and drawing on Indigenous navigation wisdom.