Capability agenda

Italy

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

Where Italy stands

Dimension	Score	Confidence	Trend
Anticipation	74.1	0.46	+6.9 over 10 years using 2 indicators
Agency	55.5	0.56	no trend
Coordination	87.7	0.39	no trend
Trust	53.6	0.50	no trend
Learning	66.7	0.55	no trend
Experimentation	61.5	0.33	+7.4 over 10 years using 3 indicators
Adaptability	64.2	0.62	no trend
Building	59.4	0.57	+2.6 over 10 years using 3 indicators
Shared Purpose	51.5	0.42	+2 over 10 years using 2 indicators

Score

weakNear the floor of the frame. Check the confidence before reading anything into it.0 to 25
below middleIn the lower half of the frame.25 to 50
above middleIn the upper half of the frame.50 to 75
strongNear the top of the frame on this dimension.75 and above

Confidence

very thin0.00 to 0.25
The score rests on one or two indicators. Do not quote it on its own.
thin0.25 to 0.45
A minority of indicators, or evidence old enough to have moved. Read with care.
usable0.45 to 0.65
Enough evidence to compare countries, with known holes.
good0.65 and above
Most indicators observed, recent, from official or intergovernmental sources.

Capability over time

Select a dimension to see how Italy’s comparable evidence has moved over time. The vertical scale is the current comparison frame, from 0 to 100.

Dimension

Period

Capability position in the current frame0 to 100

Shared Purpose 1996 → 2026: 67.8 to 71.0 (+3.2) over 30 years using 2 indicators

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.

What to measure first

The evidence is too thin to manage these dimensions confidently.

Experimentation

0.33

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.

Coordination

0.39

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.

Shared Purpose

0.42

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.

What to keep watching

These dimensions score at least 50 with usable evidence.

Dimension	Score	Confidence
Anticipation	74.1	0.46
Learning	66.7	0.55
Adaptability	64.2	0.62
Building	59.4	0.57
Agency	55.5	0.56
Trust	53.6	0.50

Missing data

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.

What the indicators miss about Italy

Documented deliveries linked to missing indicators. They do not affect scores or confidence.

Italy's FinTech regulatory sandbox, and its contraction (Experimentation)
Italy's FinTech sandbox, run by the Bank of Italy, Consob and IVASS under the MEF's FinTech Committee, admitted 16 projects from its first application window (November 2021 to January 2022) but only 3 from its second (November to December 2023), after applications fell by about 80.7 percent.
MOSE, the Venice lagoon flood barrier (Building)
Works on MOSE, Italy's system of 78 mobile gates at Venice's three lagoon inlets, began in 2003. All the gates were first raised on 10 July 2020, and 6,689.07 million euros had been appropriated by mid-2022 with the works about 95 percent complete and still unfinished past their planned 2021 completion.
Fondo nuove competenze (Learning)
Italy's Fondo nuove competenze, set up in 2020 and run by the national labour policy agency ANPAL through two notices, was created to pay for working hours employers turned into training under union agreements, and by the end of 2021 it had covered almost 30 million hours of training for almost 270,000 workers, about 110 hours each.
Dottorati innovativi con le imprese (PNRR M4C2 investment 3.3), XXXVIII cycle (Coordination)
Italy's Ministry of University and Research funded 1,708 company co-financed innovative doctoral scholarships in the 38th doctoral cycle (academic year 2022/2023), against the 5,000 that decree 352/2022 had allocated for that year, and cut the measure's target from 15,000 scholarships and 450 million euros to 6,000 scholarships and 360 million euros.
Cassa integrazione con causale Covid-19, 2020 (Adaptability)
Italy's Cura Italia decree of 17 March 2020 created wage supplementation with a Covid-19 cause across ordinary CIG, the solidarity funds and CIG in deroga, and INPS recorded 5.27 million beneficiaries in April 2020 and 2.8 billion authorised hours from March to August, but about 83 percent of firms asked INPS to pay workers directly and the institute's own report records the resulting delay in payments for the first period.
SPID, the public digital identity issued by accredited private providers (Coordination)
Italy's Agency for Digital Italy runs SPID, the public digital identity system in which accredited identity providers, private firms such as Aruba, InfoCert, Namirial and Register alongside state-controlled Poste Italiane and public companies such as Lepida and InfoCamere, issue the credentials under agreements with the agency, and by 8 October 2025 41 million SPID identities had been issued, when the agency extended the providers' agreements to 2027.
Reconstruction after the 2016 and 2017 Central Italy earthquakes (Adaptability)
Italy's Extraordinary Commissioner for reconstruction after the 2016 Central Italy earthquakes reported that by 31 May 2026 private reconstruction had received 36,149 grant applications for 17.82 billion euros, approved 24,650, granted 12.59 billion and paid 7.99 billion, and that 14,968 of 23,361 authorised building sites had been completed across the 138 municipalities of the crater.

Contribute

Fill a gap, file evidence or challenge an indicator at github.com/envisioning/national-capability-benchmark. The docs explain the method and decisions.

🇮🇹Italy