Harmonizing State Innovation Statistics With the Requirements of European Standards: Institutional Basis, Challenges, and Opportunities

Abstract

The relevance of this work stems from the necessity to make informed government decisions aimed at strengthening the innovation ecosystem and its entrepreneurial component as the foundation for the recovery of the Ukrainian economy and overcoming its structural and technological backwardness. This requires the production of high quality and reliable statistical data that conform to the best practices of the European Union. The article delineates the institutional framework for adapting Ukraine’s state statistics in the field of innovation to the requirements of European standards. The results show that the national statistical methodology for assessing innovation activities of enterprises generally complies with EU regulations and recommendations. However, the suspension of publication of current statistical information during the period of martial law prevents an assessment of all components of the quality of the respective state statistical observation for accuracy, consistency, comparability, and comprehensibility of statistical data. Furthermore, the article elucidates the specific aspects of the EU tools employed to assess national and regional innovation ecosystems and their entrepreneurial component, in particular, the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) and the Regional Innovation Scoreboard (RIS). It outlines the characteristics of individual EIS indicators that are outside the scope of state statistics in 2023 and assesses the capacity of the State Statistics Service to measure them. Among these indicators, those that were duplicated in another, more comprehensive EU toolkit for assessing the digital performance of Europe–the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI)–were identified. Following a Ukrainian government decree, these indicators will be collected and published annually starting in 2025. Finally, the article outlines the conditions for the inclusion of Ukrainian regions in the RIS, which will be facilitated by the adopted statistical classification of territorial units of Ukraine (NUTS-UA).