About this site

Are you interested in how data can increase innovation capacity in your country's public sector?

Then innovationbarometer.org is your go-to site.

This website is the home of not only the Copenhagen Manual – a practical guide on how and why your country can benefit from measuring public sector innovation – but also a hub for sharing experiences on and examples of how to conduct and use nationwide survey measurements of public sector innovation.

A helping hand

The Copenhagen Manual is a helping hand for those who are in a position to further data-informed strategies for public sector development or who have been given the responsibility for conducting a survey on public sector innovation.

The manual was originally intended to simply convey the experiences of the Nordic Innovation Barometers to inspire other countries to make similar measurements and thus create new opportunities for mutual learning.

Visit the Copenhagen Manual

The process 

Twelve months of meetings and discussions on how to measure public sector innovation led to the creation of the Copenhagen Manual, which aims to be universal in spirit without recommending conformity. Public sectors everywhere face challenges, and because they are organised differently their chal­lenges may also differ. Public sector decision makers across the globe need to find a balance between producing a purely national survey versus a survey that enables international comparisons. The Copenhagen Manual is intended to be a helping hand, regardless of the balance.

During those 12 months, a community was established, boosted by considerable growth in countries and organisations interested in helping to produce the Copenhagen Manual together with the nine organisations responsible for the original five Nordic Innovation Barometers.

The community participants

Share your results and experiences 

The community now comprises decision makers, civil servants, innovation consultants, survey experts, statisticians, communications specialists and scholars from 20 countries. The community also saw the value of creating an online hub that would allow new and future members to continuously share documents and experiences as more and more countries used surveys to measure public sector innovation.

We hope you will find that this site a useful resource in your efforts to collect more data on public sector innovation. In turn we hope you will contribute with your experiences and results.

What is an 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. 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. 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 public sector innovation survey is called something completely different than Innovation Barometer is unimportant.