A prominent policy institute announced this weekend that it has finalized a comprehensive five-year strategic roadmap to complete its previous five-year strategic roadmap, which itself was developed to address shortcomings identified in the strategic roadmap that preceded it.

The new framework, titled Toward 2031: A Vision for Visioning, was unveiled at a launch event attended by approximately forty stakeholders, six of whom had also attended the launch event for the previous framework and one of whom had personally typed both documents.

“This is not merely a plan to revisit the plan,” said the institute’s director, gesturing toward a slide that contained the word holistic in three different fonts. “This is a plan to plan more responsibly than the plan that planned the plan.”

The roadmap is organized around six pillars, four cross-cutting themes, eleven strategic priorities, and a single deliverable: a future roadmap. Each pillar is supported by a working group, each working group is supported by a sub-working group, and each sub-working group reports quarterly to a committee that has not yet been formed.

Funders praised the document for its clarity. “I particularly appreciated the executive summary,” said one donor, who declined to confirm whether they had read past it. “It is the kind of executive summary that makes you feel that someone, somewhere, is going to do something.”

The institute confirmed that key milestones include the establishment of a steering committee by the end of the first year, the publication of an interim report by the end of the second year, and a comprehensive review of progress by the end of the third year, after which planning will begin in earnest for the next five-year cycle.

Critics have argued that the framework lacks specific outcomes, but supporters counter that this is precisely its strength. “If we committed to specific outcomes,” explained a senior fellow, “we would no longer be able to recommend further study, and further study is the engine of our entire field.”

The launch event concluded with a panel discussion in which four experts agreed that the situation was complex, three suggested that more data was needed, and two recommended a future conference at which these recommendations could be more thoroughly recommended.

A press release issued at the close of the event confirmed that the institute remains committed to “an inclusive, forward-leaning, multi-stakeholder approach to the kind of long-term thinking that requires no immediate action whatsoever.”

A follow-up document, Operationalizing the Operational Framework, is expected by the end of the quarter, pending the convening of the working group responsible for convening the working group that will produce it.