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 | 54.4 | 0.46 | +23.2 over 10 years using 2 indicators |
| Agency | 52.0 | 0.56 | no trend |
| Coordination | 86.1 | 0.41 | no trend |
| Trust | 58.2 | 0.50 | no trend |
| Learning | 50.9 | 0.55 | no trend |
| Experimentation | 11.4 | 0.33 | -3.4 over 10 years using 3 indicators |
| Adaptability | 77.9 | 0.59 | no trend |
| Building | 74.1 | 0.57 | +6.2 over 10 years using 3 indicators |
| Shared Purpose | 55.7 | 0.40 | -1 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 Do not quote it on its own.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 Malaysia’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: 41.9 to 43.0 (+1.1) 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.
The evidence is too thin to manage these dimensions confidently.
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.
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.
These dimensions score at least 50 with usable evidence.
| Dimension | Score | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Adaptability | 77.9 | 0.59 |
| Building | 74.1 | 0.57 |
| Trust | 58.2 | 0.50 |
| Anticipation | 54.4 | 0.46 |
| Agency | 52.0 | 0.56 |
| Learning | 50.9 | 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 Malaysia that the framework records as evidence. They appear beside the score and do not change it or its confidence.
Malaysia's national COVID-19 immunisation programme had administered 57,119,777 doses by 31 December 2021, while the MySejahtera application was used to collect 974,134 adverse-event responses for vaccine safety monitoring.
Malaysia completed and opened the 57.7-kilometre MRT Putrajaya Line in two phases, with 36 operational stations serving a corridor of about two million people; full operations began on 16 March 2023.
Malaysia allowed the bilateral Kuala Lumpur–Singapore high-speed rail agreement to terminate on 31 December 2020 and paid Singapore SGD102,815,576 in March 2021 for verified costs incurred on the project and for extending its suspension.
Malaysia's National Disaster Management Agency (NADMA), water and meteorological agencies and telecommunications companies sent more than five million flood-warning SMS messages during the 2023/24 monsoon season and upgraded 442 transmission-tower sites to keep warnings and communications functioning.
Malaysia's JENDELA Phase 1 connected 7.74 million premises with fibre by 2022, above its 7.5 million target, and raised 4G coverage in populated areas to 96.92% through a regulator-led programme delivered with telecommunications providers.
Bank Negara Malaysia merged its clearing subsidiary with the banks' payment consortium into PayNet, jointly owned by the central bank and the financial industry, which rolled out the Real-time Retail Payments Platform with DuitNow from December 2018; BNM statistics record 5,438.6 million RPP transactions worth RM3,638.1 billion in 2025, up from 109.3 million in 2019.
Bank Negara Malaysia has operated a fintech regulatory sandbox since October 2016 and added an accelerated Green Lane for financial institutions in February 2024; as of June 2026 it reported 139 Standard and Green Lane applications submitted to date and five solutions in live testing.
Malaysia's Ministry of Higher Education approved 680 Public-Private Research Network projects involving 634 companies by the end of 2022, with a total allocation of RM27.7 million, and 469 of them had closed as successfully completed.
Malaysia's public community colleges, run by the Ministry of Higher Education, counted 259,788 part-time students, including participants in Pembelajaran Sepanjang Hayat lifelong-learning courses, in 2024, against 259,810 in 2023, according to the ministry's Statistik Pendidikan Tinggi 2024.
Fill a gap, file evidence or challenge an indicator at github.com/envisioning/national-capability-benchmark. The docs explain the method and decisions.