The Innovation Barometer is the first fully representative national PSI survey, spanning all levels of government, in compliance with international quality standards for statistics.

The barometer differs from most statistics, as respondents are essentially end users - public innovators or non-innovators seeking to improve. This is achieved via a practical approach. Although the Oslo Manual was a starting point, every step is guided by the needs of those who will use the results. Questions are selected and tested to fit the interest and real life experiences of public employees rather than theoretical frameworks.

Following the user-oriented approach, 300 innovators were involved in interpreting and communicating results, using their own SoMe profiles, as the team helped them with infographics, photos and cases. Books, videos, conferences and a steady flow of new analyses combined with media strategies led to +200 news articles. Media coverage now occurs without COI doing anything.

Nordic data collection or planning thereof has reached 2nd (Norway 2019, Sweden 2021) and 3rd round (Denmark 2020), enabling comparison over time and across borders. Yet, the most significant development is the growing global interest and demand for practical guidance. To meet the demand, +50 actors from 19 countries are currently co-creating the Copenhagen Manual (www.innovationbarometer.org/cphmanual) - a user-oriented guide on how and why any country could benefit from making an Innovation Barometer. Besides the Nordics, the process has participators from Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Wales, OECD and the European Commission. Copenhagen Manual participators from Germany, Austria and Switzerland have tested an adopted version the Innovation Barometer - Innovationskompass - in 2019, planning for nationwide surveys in 2020. https://www.innovationskompass.net/hintergrund.html

1st version: COI, Statistics Denmark and University of Aarhus combined competencies in innovation, user involvement, survey design and statistics. Questionnaire development included 7 workshops, engaging +100 citizens, public sector employees and innovation specialists. Later COI assisted 7 Nordic adaptors - ministries, innovation authorities, municipal organizations (who have joined forces in The Nordic Public Sector Innovation Hub) – who further developed and improved the original design

A large variety of people and organisations use barometer data, applying them for their own purposes, e.g. practical inspiration for innovation work, policymaking, strategising, executive leadership development, teaching, research, consultancy services and public affairs. Or for legitimizing certain decisions and criticising others. In short, the Nordic Innovation Barometers are put to use as the public good they were intended to be, also in ways the developers and adaptors did not foresee.

A telling end user example: Ulla Egholm, the head of a municipal daycare centre, wrote in a review of one of the books based on the barometer: "The Innovation Barometer: New Together Better' allows you to dive into the different chapters according to what and where in the innovation work, or where you are interested, or need to read what others have succeeded - to be inspired in your own innovation process. There are many instructive practice descriptions that reveal how others have thought innovatively and imaginatively in solving their challenge. The book can be used as a reference in every part of the public sector, and for all kinds of innovation inspiration. There are plenty of useful tools. I think this book is going to be in my "work library" as a reference I use when we are working on innovative projects, or whenever I need to read more about where and how others have succeeded with new ideas".

We underestimated the resistance to measurements. Many public sector employees find themselves overburdened with measurements and requirements for registrations for which they see no purpose. ‘And now we would introduce yet another one’. Various people feared that the public sector would be stigmatized as not at all innovative, that the survey would reveal that public employees were against change or that benchmarking would put some municipalities on display in a bad way.
The team reached out to our critics and learned from their concerns. More had to be done to avoid 'strategic answers', to invoke the interest of the individual respondent and to communicate the team's intentions. The survey was made voluntary and anonymous. Invitation emails were segmented so that each respondent got a personal email with her full name.
Later, when data showed that public workplaces are often innovative and that employee-driven innovation is widespread, critics became fond users of Innovation Barometer data.

You need to never stop thinking of your respondent as a potential user of the results. Why should a busy head of a school, library or nursing home answer? What should she be able to use the results for herself? Be ready to disappoint any innovation expert's dream of data if your user involvement tells you so.

You also need to set up a team or form a partnership where a mix of competencies for innovation, user involvement, survey design, statistics and strategic communication are continuously present.

You should expect resistance from strong and well-organized critics and be able to create a dialogue and understanding with them.

It is important to determine early what the specific purpose of your Innovation Barometer is. What agenda do you hope to set? Use your purpose to create interest and potential collaborations with other stakeholders.

To get the most out of your investment, make it easy and free for others to use your data for their own purpose.

The Innovation Barometer has been developed further by the Nordic countries using it also in subsequent rounds of the original Danish survey. Adding questions to the survey to focus more on topics important in a current national agenda is quite straightforward, although modifying essential questions from the original questionnaire complicates international comparisons. Recommendations on what questions to keep alike will be part of the Copenhagen Manual.

The most significant development made to the Innovation Barometer is that the second round of the Norwegian survey includes a parallel survey targeting local and regional politicians that play a crucial role in enabling local and regional public sector innovation. In turn, this has inspired Denmark to do a similar survey (February 2020) targeting Danish local and regional politician.

The interest in putting work into the co-creation of the Copenhagen Manual from 14 non-Nordic countries indicates a global potential.

The difficult part of the Innovation Barometer is to define and reach the respondents. The survey is conducted at a workplace level, but finding the workplaces can be hard. Reach out to a national statistics agency to explore whether registry information on public sector workplaces is available. If so, also explore the opportunity to merge data from the survey with existing registry data on workplace size, location, etc.

To reach a high response rate for the survey, the invitation email should address the manager of each workplace by name via the manager’s direct email address. When data collection have relied on the general administration within an organisation forwarding the invitations to the relevant managers, the response rate has been lower, as the forwarding practice involves a risk of the survey never reaching the intended respondent. Finding the contact information of all respondents is time consuming, but pays off in terms of a higher response rate.

Make sure to test the questionnaire on potential respondents. It is crucial that questions make sense to respondents in your national setting. Your time is better spent testing the questions than overthinking the them theoretically. Get a head start like this: Translate the exiting questionnaire into your own language using a free online translation service, email the document to 5 public employees you trust, and have them answer using a pencil. Call them up and ask if it makes sense. This will give you a lot of practically usable knowledge as you know have done testing.

Involve stakeholders from the beginning – especially those that might be opposed to the survey, as conflict might be an obstruction. Try your best to reach a compromise beforehand.

Finally, to make full use of the survey results a lot of communication efforts are needed. It is advisable to spend more time and resources communicating the results than conducting the survey, as there is no reason to do a survey that no one will know about.

Sharing your innovation with others takes time, but it multiplies the value of your work as others take it upon themselves to further develop your innovation and test its robustness in new contexts. It also makes your own work much more fun to be challenged by new insights, though it will mean mild annoyance like 'why didn't we think of that ourselves?'. Certainly, the value and global scaling potential of the Innovation Barometer would never have reached its current level had it not been for the adopting processes carried through by Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (FI), Icelandic Association of Local Authorities (IS), Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs (IS), Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (NO), Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (NO), Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SE) and Vinnova (SE).