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NCBNational Capability Benchmark
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Challenge the benchmark

Choose a score and give the benchmark a specific reason to reconsider it.

The selected score and confidence are read from the current country file when you submit.

Submissions are public and start as awaiting review. A maintainer can add a response and signature after review.

What countries built

Each record describes something a country built that the indicators miss. The source provides the number; the mechanism is our interpretation.

Scores describe outcomes. These records describe how a country acted, what it needed and what happened. 204 of 204 records include a mechanism. They do not affect scores.

Narrow the list

2 of 204 deliveries

Coordination

1 delivery linked to University-industry collaboration.

Australiasince 1991still operatingbears on University-industry collaboration

Cooperative Research Centres programme

Australia's Department of Industry reported that its Cooperative Research Centres portfolio facilitated 304 businesses establishing research-focused collaborations in 2023–24, across 114 CRC and 190 CRC Projects partners, above the year's target of 248.

304 businesses, businesses establishing research-focused collaborations, 2024. 248 businesses, portfolio target, 2024. Australian Department of Industry, Science and Resources, Annual Report 2023–24, retrieved 2026-08-31.

The move, and what it needed

Australia funds industry-led research centres for three to ten years and shorter CRC Projects for up to three years, giving firms and researchers a shared programme, matching resources and a governance structure for applied work. The long and short formats let a mature collaboration and a focused translation project coexist.

Preconditions

  • Universities, research organisations and firms able to define a problem together and commit staff or cash
  • A competitive public grant process with independent assessment and enough duration for trust and technical work to accumulate
  • A centre-level governance and intellectual-property framework that can turn joint research into adoption or further investment

Where it travelled: University–industry centres travel when public grants buy durable shared capacity and firms own a consequential problem; short networking schemes without governance, matching effort or a path to adoption produce thinner ties.

Limits: The partner count measures collaborations facilitated through grant agreements, not completed research, commercialisation, additionality or university-only links. It is an administrative portfolio measure whose reporting and retrospective calculations can change, and partners include research organisations and community bodies alongside universities and businesses.

Shared Purpose

1 delivery linked to Civic participation.

Australiasince 1924still operatingbears on Civic participation

Compulsory voting

Australia has required citizens to vote since 1924 and turnout at the 2025 federal election was 90.7 percent of enrolled voters, a level no large voluntary-voting democracy reaches.

90.7 % of enrolled voters, house of representatives turnout, 2025 federal election, 2025. Australian Electoral Commission, participation in the 2025 federal election, retrieved 2026-08-27.

The move, and what it needed

Parliament made voting a legal duty with a token fine, paired it with automatic-style enrolment, Saturday voting and easy postal and early options, so the state removed every excuse at the same time as it imposed the duty.

Preconditions

  • Cross-party agreement to keep the duty, since either side could repeal it
  • An electoral commission trusted to run painless voting
  • A fine large enough to state the norm and small enough not to embitter

Where it travelled: Around twenty countries mandate voting and fewer enforce it; Belgium and Luxembourg are the closest working siblings. Where compulsion was dropped, as in Chile in 2012, turnout fell by tens of points within two elections.

Limits: Turnout under compulsion measures compliance, not civic desire, which is exactly the objection to filing it under civic participation; the record is here because the indicator's construct is participation behaviour, and ninety percent of a country voting for a century is behaviour, whatever its cause. The denominator is enrolled voters, and enrolment itself is near-complete only because it is also compulsory. The fine is small and enforcement light, so the mechanism is closer to a maintained norm than to coercion.