The JRC was invited for the fifth consecutive year, by the Cornell University, INSEAD business school and the World Intellectual Property Organization to conduct thorough conceptual and statistical coherence tests on the Global Innovation Index (GII) to ensure its reliability and transparency and to help deriving more accurate and meaningful policy recommendations.

The Global Innovation Index (GII) is used as a tool assisting policy-makers in tailoring policies to promote long-term output growth, improved productivity, and job growth. The GII has evolved as a leading reference on innovation, nearing its 9th edition in 2016. In addition to major global media coverage, the GII has been prominently launched over the last three years by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Geneva (2013), Australian Minister for Industry Ian Macfarlane in Sydney (2014), and British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Baroness Neville-Rolfe in London (2015). The GII is considered as the leading index worldwide used to benchmark national performance across more than 140 countries (the index receives more than a million hits on the web).

The JRC has engaged in an iterative process with the GII developers in order to arrive at an index that meets international quality standards. A first set of JRC recommendations were offered to the developers through confidential pre-audit reports. Once the JRC recommendations were adopted by the index developers, a final JRC audit on the statistical and conceptual properties and policy implications of the GII was delivered to the developers. The final JRC assessment of the GII was included in the main GII report. Additionally, the JRC co-authored together with Cornell University, UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the WIPO the Chapter on Benchmarking Innovation Performance at the Global and Country Levels.

The GII developers suggest that a critical element of the report's success and credibility has been the annual statistical audit conducted by the JRC. Each year, the cooperation is fully acknowledged both during the launch and in the written report. This year, marking the 5th year of the cooperation, the index developers thanked the JRC more personally for the comprehensive audit, confidence analysis, and overall insights into the construction of the index. They suggested that the contribution that the JRC makes to the statistical community and to innovation policy in this way is significant.