The paper has been an input to the INNO-Policy Trendchart on “Trends and challenges in Public Sector Innovation in Europe” edited by Lorena Rivera León, Paul Simmonds and Laura Roman and published on 3 December 2012.

The objective of this report was to identify the main patterns and characterisation of Public Sector Innovation (PSI) in the European Union. It studied the perceptions of PSI in the EU, drivers and barriers to PSI, and lessons learned from the implementation of PSI in specific sectors. The report is based on country reports produced by the TrendChart country correspondents performing selected interviews with public officials and academics from 25 Member States (i.e. EU27 with the exception of Cyprus and Luxembourg), like the one at hand which refers to Austria. The cross-country report uses the grounded theory method for qualitative data analysis, and is probably the first qualitative empirical attempt to study Public Sector Innovation across different countries and multicultural contexts in the European Union.