Environmental Scanning

Environmental Scanning is an approach for identifying and communicating information and ideas on emerging and potential issues and trends. The constant changes and dynamic nature of our world today will have profound impact on our careers and on the contributions actuaries can make. AOF identified Environmental Scanning as a key strategic initiative to keep abreast of new developments and trends that can impact pour profession–by better understanding these we'll be better positioned to proactively make better decisions and take better actions.

While we our scanning efforts ultimately align with FutureRisk.org, we also feel that AOF should pay particular attention to items impacting Careers and Education, focusing on the following areas:

• Careers
  • Personal Actuary
  • Enterprise Risk Manager
  • Actuarial Pioneers/Non-Traditional Employment
  • Traditional Employment
• Education
  • Basic–items relevant to the education and examination process
  • Continuing–items relevant to post-exam education

We've developed a framework for scanning in which we hope to enlist a broad reach of section members, council and friends to help find and report on topics. Ideally, people interested in any of these topics that are already reading and scanning these areas will share their findings with us.

We welcome and encourage your contribution–If you see an article, journal, news story, editorial or research related to our primary focus areas, please let us know about it. We've created a template for reporting findings–complete and send to any AOF council member. Submissions will be organized into a database and reported via AOF conference calls, our newsletter, and the Web site, with recommendations for further actions made by AOF council. As this initiative develops we'll continue to seek better ways to continue collecting and sharing relevant information.