auDA’s Future Scenarios Project – navigating an unknown future

Progress can be incremental or swift, it can unfold in ways we predicted, but more often it takes an unexpected course. In any case, change happens, driven by forces both within and outside our control.

auDA's 2021-25 Strategy draws to an end in June 2025, and so we have carried out a Future Scenarios Project to help us consider and plan for the future.

As auDA CEO Rosemary Sinclair AM articulated it, "auDA isn't looking to tweak our current strategy. In preparation for our next strategy, we are thinking deeply about the future, the myriad ways it might impact our operating environment and what it might mean for Australians, the .au domain and auDA.

"In an industry that is little more than 30-years old and defined by innovation, disruption and dynamism, we know our future will be markedly different to our past."

auDA's Future Scenarios Project Report

To help us navigate the future, we embarked on a Future Scenarios Project through which we developed three scenarios that present starkly different views of a possible 2044.

The scenarios were developed using an adapted form of the Oxford Scenario Planning Approach developed at the Saïd Business School.

We iterated the three scenarios over several months with a core team at auDA and a diverse set of local and global expert participants representing the public, private and not-for-profit sectors across a range of industries, communities and stakeholders.

The scenarios are intended to challenge current assumptions and will provide auDA the opportunity to:

• Navigate ambiguity, disruption and change
• Drive innovation
• Manage future complexity by thinking about it in advance.

The scenarios are not intended to be projections or forecasts of the future, nor expressions of desired future states. Instead, each scenario sets out a possible future context from which internet standards, governance models, and interoperability and security considerations might evolve. They are intended to challenge our thinking and present a new mix of opportunities and difficulties we may need to address and overcome in delivering our vision of an open, free, secure and global internet.

The scenarios

The scenarios are set out in our Future Scenarios Project Report.

Scenario 1: State of Alert 2044, where national security is the priority in a world of global tensions.

Scenario 2: Ecological Civilisation 2044, where collective resilience is the priority in a world where climate catastrophe can no longer be ignored.

Scenario 3: The Price is Right 2044, where profit is the priority in a world where corporations transcend the nation-state.

What's next

The scenarios do not represent a forward strategy outline or business plan. They are designed to stretch us to consider those events that are plausible but may seem only remotely possible.

In financial year 2024-25, auDA will develop a new organisational strategy to take us through the following five years and we will use these scenarios to help guide our strategic decision-making. We will refer to the scenarios to consider how auDA might respond and contribute to a future in which the internet is markedly different from the present.

We see the Future Scenarios Project Report as a public resource. We invite others in the internet and technology sectors to use the scenarios as a basis for their own thinking and strategic planning.

We hope it will be useful to those who rely on the internet as a critical enabler as well as support the broader domain name system and information and communications technology industry to work towards a shared future.

Read auDA's Future Scenarios Project Report.

research