Data on performance and outcomes plays a crucial role in the Danish public employment service (PES), 'STAR'. PES from five European countries came to Denmark to learn from their colleagues' experience on the topic during a learning dialogue on 'evidence-based services/decisions' on 17-18 September in Copenhagen.

Participants heard that, since 1997, jobcentres in Denmark have been collecting and reporting data on individuals - applying common standards to ensure comparability across municipalities. Over the years, this strategy has allowed STAR to build an extensive knowledge base.

This knowledge base is now widely considered the backbone of the Danish employment system. It is used to empirically ground STAR’s decisions and services, to generate new policy ideas and strategies, to support the implementation process of such ideas and to evaluate their effects.

Among the many points of interest for the participating PES, two major questions emerged: how to involve research institutions and employers in such a strategy, and to what extent municipalities and local offices can be included.

The representatives from STAR highlighted the strong cooperation with the scientific community which underpins their strategy. They actively engage researchers, research institutes and universities, for example when setting up and systematically updating a database on research results related to active labour market policies.

They also pointed out that though the general strategy has been developed solely by STAR, municipalities are asked to contribute to its fine-tuning and implementation.

For more information on evidence-based services, consult the related documents below.

• Policy paper – Evidence-based service delivery
• Promising PES Practice – Evidence-based PES services
• Evidence-based design of services using randomised controlled trials (RCTs)