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 | 82.2 | 0.46 | +17 over 10 years using 2 indicators |
| Agency | 74.5 | 0.56 | no trend |
| Coordination | 74.0 | 0.40 | no trend |
| Trust | 70.4 | 0.49 | no trend |
| Learning | 84.2 | 0.54 | no trend |
| Experimentation | 60.5 | 0.36 | +3.6 over 10 years using 3 indicators |
| Adaptability | 72.6 | 0.62 | no trend |
| Building | 75.0 | 0.57 | +6.4 over 10 years using 3 indicators |
| Shared Purpose | 32.3 | 0.28 | no trend |
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 Do not quote it on its own.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 Singapore’s comparable evidence has moved over time. The vertical scale is the current comparison frame, from 0 to 100.
Dimension
Period
Experimentation 2006 → 2026: 60.6 to 74.5 (+13.9) over 20 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 easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved?
Uses 6 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.
These dimensions score at least 50 with usable evidence.
| Dimension | Score | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Learning | 84.2 | 0.54 |
| Anticipation | 82.2 | 0.46 |
| Building | 75.0 | 0.57 |
| Agency | 74.5 | 0.56 |
| Adaptability | 72.6 | 0.62 |
| Trust | 70.4 | 0.49 |
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 Singapore that the framework records as evidence. They appear beside the score and do not change it or its confidence.
Singapore gave every citizen aged 25 and over an individual training account in 2016 and keeps topping it up, and in 2024 260,000 Singaporeans spent credit on courses, up 35 percent on the year before.
Singapore set up the Housing and Development Board in 1960 to address a severe housing shortage, and it built more than 21,000 flats within its first three years.
Singapore established the Centre for Strategic Futures in 2009 inside the Prime Minister's Office strategy system to study blind spots, run long-term futures research and develop foresight methods.
Singapore's Monetary Authority operates three FinTech Regulatory Sandbox variants—Sandbox, Sandbox Express and Sandbox Plus—giving firms distinct routes to test regulated products with real customers under defined safeguards.
Singapore's Department of Statistics ICT-skills table reports 99.0% in the total row for residents aged 16–74 in 2025, while 55.2% could use a basic arithmetic formula in a spreadsheet; the government uses the series to track SDG 4.4.1 and its Digital Skills for Life framework.
Singapore's State Courts disposed of 21,816 civil cases against 20,358 filings in 2023, a 107% civil clearance rate; its Community Justice and Tribunals courts recorded a 99% clearance rate in the same year.
PUB contracted Hyflux's Tuaspring Pte Ltd under a water purchase agreement for Singapore's largest desalination plant, opened in 2013, then terminated the agreement on 17 April 2019 after the operator failed to keep the plant reliably operational, took the plant into public ownership in May 2019 and spent around $80 million on repairs due for completion in mid-2021.
Singapore's Ministry of Finance introduced the Jobs Support Scheme in the Unity Budget of 18 February 2020, raised and extended it through the Resilience, Solidarity and Fortitude Budgets, the fourth of them presented on 26 May 2020, and disbursed $22.6 billion of wage support from April to December 2020.
Singapore's drainage authorities, the Drainage Department and later PUB, expanded the national drainage system under a drainage master plan, with a development drainage code from 1976, and reduced flood-prone areas from about 3,200 hectares in the 1970s to less than 25 hectares by 2025, with about $2.5 billion spent on drainage upgrades since 2011.
Fill a gap, file evidence or challenge an indicator at github.com/envisioning/national-capability-benchmark. The docs explain the method and decisions.