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 | 98.1 | 0.46 | +13.3 over 10 years using 2 indicators |
| Agency | 72.8 | 0.56 | no trend |
| Coordination | 99.6 | 0.23 | no trend |
| Trust | 94.1 | 0.50 | no trend |
| Learning | 66.0 | 0.55 | no trend |
| Experimentation | 42.3 | 0.33 | -2.6 over 10 years using 3 indicators |
| Adaptability | 79.3 | 0.62 | no trend |
| Building | 52.9 | 0.57 | +6.4 over 10 years using 3 indicators |
| Shared Purpose | 75.0 | 0.42 | -2.6 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 Do not quote it on its own.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 Denmark’s comparable evidence has moved over time. The vertical scale is the current comparison frame, from 0 to 100.
Dimension
Period
Shared Purpose 1996 → 2026: 95.1 to 88.4 (-6.7) over 30 years using 2 indicators; 1 touched the frame edge
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.
How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives?
Uses 2 observed indicators.
Missing indicators: University-industry collaboration, Public-private collaboration.
Rejected datasets: Government effectiveness, Regulatory quality, Logistics performance.
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.
To what extent can people imagine themselves as participants in a common project?
Uses 3 observed indicators.
Missing indicators: Sense of national belonging, Volunteering, Political polarisation.
Rejected datasets: Voice and accountability.
These dimensions score at least 50 with usable evidence.
| Dimension | Score | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Anticipation | 98.1 | 0.46 |
| Trust | 94.1 | 0.50 |
| Adaptability | 79.3 | 0.62 |
| Agency | 72.8 | 0.56 |
| Learning | 66.0 | 0.55 |
| Building | 52.9 | 0.57 |
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. |
Documented deliveries linked to missing indicators. They do not affect scores or confidence.
Denmark's data protection authority and digitalisation agency selected two projects from 23 applications for the first round of their regulatory sandbox for AI in July 2024, two from 18 applications in June 2025 and three more in July 2026, seven projects in all.
Denmark's parliament abolished the statutory Board of Technology, set up by Act no. 375 of 14 June 1995 to assess technology and report to the Folketing, by Act no. 559 of 18 June 2012, after an all-party budget agreement of 15 November 2011 withdrew its annual grant, which had been DKK 10.5 million in 2011, to fund the research reserve.
Statistics Denmark counted 386,879 participations in Denmark's state-funded adult vocational training courses (AMU) in 2024, about 7,056 full-time equivalents, down from 1,050,944 participations and 15,307 full-time equivalents in 2010.
Denmark's innovation fund (Danmarks Innovationsfond, formerly Innovationsfonden) awarded 138 Industrial Researcher grants in 2025, from 252 applications and for 147.4 million kroner, each funding a researcher employed by a company and enrolled at or supervised by a university.
Denmark's government, employers and unions agreed a wage compensation scheme on 14 March 2020, the Danish Business Authority opened applications 11 days later on 25 March and decided about 90 percent of applications within 30 days, paying DKK 12.7 billion in the first phase (March to August 2020) on 66,631 applications from 34,042 firms.
Denmark's Agency for Digital Government, representing the state, regions and municipalities, and the banks, through a Finance Denmark subsidiary, jointly own MitID, launched in May 2021 to replace NemID and migrated in 2021 and 2022; by July 2026, 97.2 percent of residents over 15 had an active MitID, and it averaged 94.4 million transactions a month in 2025.
The European Court of Auditors found in 2020 that the Fehmarn Belt fixed link, the 18 km rail and road tunnel that Denmark finances, designs and builds through its state company Femern A/S, had an initial cost estimate of 4.4 billion euros at 2008 prices (5.0 billion at 2019 values) against a latest estimate of 7.7 billion, a 54 percent increase, and that construction planned to start in 2012 for opening in 2018 had started in 2020 with opening expected in 2028.
Denmark's Emergency Management Agency counted about 4,693,000 places in public shelters, protective concrete trenches and building shelters at the end of 2001, and the municipal count it collected in 2022, the first since then, recorded about 3.54 million, with places in concrete trenches down from 152,335 to 107,658 and in building shelters (sikringsrum) from 3,743,822 to 3,307,400, after municipalities had stopped requiring shelters in new buildings.
Denmark set up Kvalitetsfonden in 2007 to fund a new hospital structure. Through it the regions are building or rebuilding 16 hospitals with a combined investment frame of about DKK 57 billion (2023 prices). Rigsrevisionen reported in November 2023 that the programme's largest overrun, Nyt Hospital Nordsjælland, had its budget raised by DKK 2.3 billion, or 44 percent, and was expected six years later than planned.
Fill a gap, file evidence or challenge an indicator at github.com/envisioning/national-capability-benchmark. The docs explain the method and decisions.