Introduction: Welcome to the Copenhagen Manual

Welcome to the Copenhagen Manual – a guide on why and how your country can benefit from measuring public sector innovation. The Copenhagen Manual is a helping hand for those who are in a position to further data-informed strategies for public sector development or have been given the responsibility for preparing, analysing or communicating a survey on public sector innovation.

Like other instruction manuals, the Copenhagen Manual offers examples of use, handy tips and general warnings. The manual discusses setting strategic goals, communication, reaching respondents, adapting the questionnaire and defining public sector innovation. The manual offers an opportunity to mirror public sector innovation capacity by way of internationally comparable data. The Copenhagen Manual, with emphasis on the ‘open’ in Copenhagen is:

• the result of an co-creation process that welcomed the participation of all interested parties
• based on the open sharing of a multitude of experiences, good and bad
• open to interpretation, making it usable in different national contexts and open to continuous discussion of added practical experience as actors from more countries conduct surveys on public sector innovation

The Copenhagen Manual is not a definitive standard. It is a practical help, intended to be universally applicable in the sense that it points to important issues and trade-offs that need to be addressed by anyone seeking to survey public sector innovation successfully.

The manual is universal in spirit without recommending conformity. Public sectors everywhere face challenges, and because they are organised differently their chal- lenges may also differ. The citizens’ expectations, political will and the possibilities available to public employees differ. Public sector decision makers across the globe need to find a balance between using a purely national survey versus one with internationally comparable data. The Copenhagen Manual is intended to be a helping hand, regardless of the balance.

The Copenhagen Manual is the product of a joint effort by 60 people who were encouraged, practically assisted and supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers.

What began as an ambition in the five Nordic countries quickly developed into a diverse and expanding community of decision makers, civil servants, innovation consultants, survey experts, statisticians, communications specialists and scholars from 20 countries.

What we share is the belief that public sectors around the globe face numerous challenges that require innovation, but the lack of comparable innovation data should not be one of them. We invite you to join our community at innovationbarometer.org

Copenhagen, February 2021

How to use the Copenhagen Manual

We use manuals to help us do things. We are of the firm belief that measuring public sector innovation is a thing that needs help doing. Many attempts to measure public sector innovation have stranded due to a lack of available answers on the practical how-to questions that inevitably follow the hope of measuring public sector innova- tion and efforts to do so. The Copenhagen Manual is a set of instructions intended to help us do this particular thing in a manageable and proper way.

Good instructions must do several important things:

• Describe the actions or procedures necessary to perform a task
• Explain how a product works and its applications
• Describe how the product may be misused
• Warn users about hazards
• Encourage users to act in a safe and appropriate way
• Meet information standards and requirements

However, we should not expect instructions, regardless of how well they are written, to overcome poor design or problems such as:

• Overly complex procedures
• Unreasonable demands on the memory of users
• Inconsistency in terms of user motivation and behaviours
• Hazards that are difficult to perceive, appreciate or control

As this is a manual we would like to make you aware of certain features and limitations concerning what you are about to read.

Inspired by old-fashioned folders and binders, the design of the manual enhances findability, allowing you to easily locate the answers to how-to questions and straight- forwardly adapt them to your specific context. A drag and drop approach lets you take what you need from our systematically arranged segments on the creation of public sector innovation statistics. Each section begins with an overview on what to expect and includes these features:

• Subject-matter texts
• Actionable advice
• Use cases
• Warnings
• Quotes from the co-creation community

If, for example, you consider yourself a use case kind of person, these can be quickly identified in the various sections, allowing you to leave the other stuff behind and rapidly be on your way to applying them to whatever end you might find useful.

The Copenhagen Manual is a tool that is designed to meet a specific goal: Helping you get started on measuring the public sector innovation that is undoubtedly happening in your context. Only time will tell if this community of like-minded souls and the resulting co-creation of the Copenhagen Manual will produce the desired outcome: More and better public sector innovation measurements.

Whether the Copenhagen Manual is an effective tool in the hands of the users will be a matter of continual evaluation and testing. Thus, the work will continue here on our designated website, innovationbarometer.org, where you can become a member of the co-creator community.

WHAT IS AN INNOVATION BAROMETER?

In 2015 the Danish National Centre for Public Sector Innovation, in association with Statistics Denmark, published the world’s first official statistics on public sector innovation and named the survey the Innovation Barometer.

It is a nationwide representative survey of innovation in the public sector. Data are collected using a questionnaire for public sector workplaces of all kinds, e.g. kindergartens, nursing homes, hospitals and educational institutions.

By 2018 Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland had all conducted one or more national surveys, utilising similar methodologies and definitions, though adapted somewhat to better serve national agendas. Their ongoing efforts contributed to methodological adjustments, improving the original survey design.

All Nordic countries chose to call the survey an Innovation Barometer. Thus, through a series of national decisions, the Nordic Innovation Barometers emerged. All nine owners of the five Nordic Innovation Barometers are co-initiators of the Copenhagen Manual.

The Copenhagen Manual is freely available for use. Whether the resulting survey is called something completely different than Innovation Barometer is unimportant.