Capability agenda
Generated 2026-10-03
The frame includes 125 countries. Each dimension is scored from 0 to 100, with no overall ranking, and each score shows its confidence beside it. Read the known limits of the data before you quote a score.
Open the profile: indicators, values, years and sources
| Dimension | Score | Confidence | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anticipation | 71.4 | 0.46 | +4.3 over 10 years using 2 indicators |
| Agency | 51.5 | 0.41 | no trend |
| Coordination | 92.8 | 0.39 | no trend |
| Trust | 87.5 | 0.30 | no trend |
| Learning | 66.2 | 0.55 | no trend |
| Experimentation | 70.7 | 0.33 | +3.5 over 10 years using 3 indicators |
| Adaptability | 74.3 | 0.62 | no trend |
| Building | 68.8 | 0.57 | -3 over 10 years using 3 indicators |
| Shared Purpose | 50.7 | 0.29 | -4.8 over 10 years using 2 indicators |
Score
Confidence
The score rests on one or two indicators. Do not quote it on its own.
A minority of indicators, or evidence old enough to have moved. Read with care.
Enough evidence to compare countries, with known holes.
Most indicators observed, recent, from official or intergovernmental sources.
Select a dimension to see how Germany’s comparable evidence has moved over time. The vertical scale is the current comparison frame, from 0 to 100.
Dimension
Period
Experimentation 1996 → 2026: 100.0 to 100.0 (0) over 30 years using 2 indicators
Agenda items on this timeline
Historical values use today’s frame from 0 to 100 and a matched basket of indicators. They show movement in the available evidence, not an overall development score. Dated agenda items appear on a separate timeline and do not change the score. A missing line means the evidence does not support a comparable trend for that dimension.
The evidence is too thin to manage these dimensions confidently.
To what extent can people imagine themselves as participants in a common project?
Uses 2 observed indicators.
Missing indicators: Sense of national belonging, Volunteering, Political polarisation.
Rejected datasets: Voice and accountability.
How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks?
Uses 3 observed indicators.
Missing indicators: Trust in public institutions, Court case clearance rate.
Rejected datasets: Rule of law, Control of corruption, Intentional homicide rate.
How easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved?
Uses 4 observed indicators.
Missing indicators: Venture deals, Firms through regulatory sandboxes, University spinouts.
Rejected datasets: Business share of R&D.
How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives?
Uses 3 observed indicators.
Missing indicators: University-industry collaboration, Public-private collaboration.
Rejected datasets: Government effectiveness, Regulatory quality, Logistics performance.
How able are individuals and organizations to turn an intention into action?
Uses 3 observed indicators.
Missing indicators: Adults doing digital tasks.
These dimensions score at least 50 with usable evidence.
| Dimension | Score | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Adaptability | 74.3 | 0.62 |
| Anticipation | 71.4 | 0.46 |
| Building | 68.8 | 0.57 |
| Learning | 66.2 | 0.55 |
18 requested indicators have no comparable dataset, and each one lowers confidence. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
| Dimension | Missing indicator | What it asks |
|---|---|---|
| Anticipation | Government foresight capacity | Existence, mandate and continuity of a national strategic foresight function. |
| Anticipation | Long-horizon research commitments | New competitively awarded public research grants that run for five years or longer, as a share of all new competitive public research grants awarded in the year. |
| Agency | Adults doing digital tasks | Share of adults who carried out a named digital task in the last three months, such as sending a message with an attached file, moving a file between devices or using a spreadsheet formula, counted one task at a time and never as a skill level. |
| Coordination | University-industry collaboration | Intensity of research collaboration between universities and firms. |
| Coordination | Public-private collaboration | Frequency and scale of joint public-private delivery of national objectives. |
| Trust | Trust in public institutions | Confidence in national government, courts and civil service. |
| Trust | Court case clearance rate | Civil and commercial cases resolved in a year as a share of cases filed in the same year. |
| Learning | Adult learning participation | Share of adults in formal or non-formal education and training in the last 12 months. |
| Experimentation | Venture deals | First venture capital rounds closed by companies based in the country in the year, per million people, counted by deal and never by amount. |
| Experimentation | Firms through regulatory sandboxes | Firms admitted to, and firms completing, a regulatory sandbox or controlled trial regime in the year, per million people, summed across every regulator in the country. |
| Experimentation | University spinouts | Companies formed to commercialise university research, per million people. |
| Adaptability | Disaster preparedness and recovery | Demonstrated capacity to prepare for and recover from major shocks. |
| Adaptability | Institutional responsiveness | Speed at which rules and public programmes are changed in response to new conditions. |
| Building | Large project delivery | Cost and schedule performance of major public infrastructure projects. |
| Building | Firm scale-up rate | Share of young firms reaching significant employment or turnover thresholds. |
| Shared Purpose | Sense of national belonging | Reported identification with and attachment to the national community, as distinct from pride in the nation. |
| Shared Purpose | Volunteering | Share of adults who volunteered time to an organisation in the last month. |
| Shared Purpose | Political polarisation | Degree to which political differences run along a single hostile divide. |
These are documented institutional changes in Germany that the framework records as evidence. They appear beside the score and do not change it or its confidence.
Germany funds the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft's institutes in proportion to what they earn from industry, and in 2025 the society performed 3.2 billion euros of contract research, 966 million euros of it paid by industry.
Germany answered the 2008-2009 collapse in manufacturing orders by paying firms to cut hours instead of jobs, and short-time work covered 1.44 million workers at the May 2009 peak, about 5 percent of insured employment, while unemployment barely rose.
Germany's federal civil-protection agency trains and equips a volunteer force that reached about 88,000 people across 669 local units in May 2025, supported by about 2,200 paid staff.
West Germany built a federal warning service after 1955; after the Cold War the federally owned service was dissolved, its ten warning offices were abandoned and the nationwide siren alarm network was dismantled or transferred to municipalities, ending a system that had relied on about 1,700 volunteer helpers.
Germany held 1,967 public shelters with about 1.6 million places in 2008, decided with the states to abandon them, and decommissioned them until March 2022, leaving 579 shelters with 477,593 places, none of them functional or operational.
The federal education ministry paid half the cost of job-related further training for lower-income workers through a voucher from December 2008, issued more than 400,000 vouchers, and stopped issuing them on 31 December 2021.
After Russia's invasion of Ukraine the federal government chartered floating storage and regasification units, commissioned the first at Wilhelmshaven in December 2022, and by February 2023 expected to spend about 10 billion euros renting and running five units, against 2.94 billion euros of federal funding made available for four in May 2022.
Federal and state governments paid grants and loans to 186,100 people taking vocational upgrading courses such as master craftsman or certified educator in 2025, 3.8 times the 49,300 supported in 1997, with 1.1 billion euros approved.
Since 1990 the German Bundestag has kept an Office of Technology Assessment, run under contract by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, whose tasks include horizon scanning of scientific and technological trends at early stages; by 2026 it reported more than 200 projects and over 400 publications.
Germany's federal government ran a time-limited regulatory experimentation clause for the SINTEG smart-energy showcases from June 2017 to June 2022, under which the Federal Network Agency received 49 notifications of experiments but only two claims for compensation of regulatory costs.
Germany's dual training system, in which firms employ apprentices under contracts registered by the chambers while state vocational schools teach them, recorded 475,950 new training contracts in the year to 30 September 2025, down from 569,379 in 2011, while 54,372 offered places stayed unfilled.
Fill a gap, file evidence or challenge an indicator at github.com/envisioning/national-capability-benchmark. The docs explain the method and decisions.