The genesis of pollution control boards in India can be traced back to the United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment convened in Stockholm in 1972. The conference led to the enactment of the Water Act, 1974; (MoLJ 1974), under which pollution control boards were established in India. In the following decades, pollution control boards have been assigned additional responsibilities through the Air Act, 1981; and the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 (hereinafter the EPA) (MoLJ 1981; 1986). These laws position state pollution control boards (SPCBs) as the guardians of a healthy environment in India.

SPCBs operate as state-level entities, nested within the administrative and regulatory control of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and execute their statutory responsibilities at a provincial level. The CPCB was established in 1974 with the enactment of the Water Act, 1974, with a mandate to coordinate pollution control interventions across India by establishing pollution standards, conducting research, and providing programmatic and technical guidance to the SPCBs. The MoEFCC was established in 1985 to oversee the formulation and implementation of programmes and policies that advance broader environmental conservation and pollution control imperatives.

Thus, the current regulatory architecture for pollution control in India is marked by interdependence and collaboration among these institutions. While SPCBs function as stand-alone bodies for monitoring and regulating pollution within their respective jurisdictions, their effectiveness is intrinsically tied to the coordination and guidance provided by the CPCB as well as the larger policy frameworks that the MoEFCC and/or the government sets out from time to time like the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), Ease of Doing Business regulations, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) notifications, etc.

Given the importance of SPCBs in India’s pollution control ecosystem, there is extensive literature on their functioning. The earliest such research was the Bhattacharya Committee Report (1984), followed by the Administrative Staff College of India (1994), the report submitted by the Sub-Group (1994), and the report submitted by the Planning Commission on the functioning of SPCBs (2001) (these reports can be found in CPR (2022)). Recent literature includes an analysis of India’s environmental policy and legal framework by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD 2006), the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA’s) Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Training Institutions in India (USEPA 2005), the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow’s (IIM (L) 2010) evaluation of the CPCB, the CPCB’s audit reports of SPCBs, the Centre for Science and Environment’s (CSE’s) Transparency Index: Rating of Pollution Control Boards on Public Disclosure (Verma 2021), the Centre for Chronic Disease Control’s (2020) analysis of pollution control boards, and the Centre for Policy Research’s (CPR’s) The State of India’s Pollution Control Boards – A Series of Papers (CPR 2022).

Multiple assessments of the pollution control board ecosystem have been carried out. Although the time periods over which these assessments were conducted differ, significant commonalities emerge in the findings. The most common challenges associated with pollution control boards are listed below:

• Inconsistent tenures in leadership roles
• Uneven stakeholder representation within the board
• High vacancy rates
• Limited staff training opportunities
• Limited finances and constraints on expenditure
• Gaps in adoption of advanced pollution control technologies and data systems
• Limited institutional mechanisms for public engagement
• Systems for consistent, periodic reporting are yet to mature

While limitations have been identified, the existing literature does not examine in detail the burden that the rapidly changing Indian environmental governance scenario has placed on SPCBs. As such, there has been little research on the innovative measures and practices that SPCBs have developed to cope with their increasing responsibilities while operating with a persistent paucity of resources.

This issue brief provides an overview of the innovative practices adopted by SPCBs in India to cope with growing environmental challenges and regulatory demands. For this, we analysed existing legislation to identify the functions performed by SPCBs and provided an overview of the innovative measures they routinely employ to manage their workload. Further, we identified areas of improvement and opportunities to enhance the capacity and performance of SPCBs in fulfilling their mandate and included recommendations to address them.

The Water Act enacted in 1974 (MoLJ 1974) provided the legal foundation for creating SPCBs. The act enjoined SPCBs to carry out a range of functions pertaining to water pollution, including the following:

• granting industries the consent to establish (CTE) and consent to operate (CTO);
• inspecting industries and treatment plants to ensure compliance with the act;
• monitoring pollution in water bodies and setting standards for sewage discharge over land or in water bodies;
• collecting and disseminating information on water pollution and undertaking mass awareness programmes;
• establishing effluent standards as well as modifying and annulling them based on regional differences;
• developing economical and reliable methods to dispose of, treat, and utilise sewage by undertaking research; and
• advising state governments regarding pollution control
• The Air Act (1981) broadened the SPCBs’ functions accorded to them under the Water Act to include the management of air pollution (MoLJ 1981), thus considerably expanding their workload. In 1987, the law was amended to extend the CTE and CTO requirement from just “16 types of industrial activities” to “any industrial activity,” leading to a significant increase in workload caused by the increase in the number of consent applications.

The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 (hereinafter EPA), was enacted following the Bhopal Gas Tragedy (Abraham and Abraham 1991). As an umbrella act, the EPA is supplemented by several subordinate legislations that govern a range of functions from environmental protection and prevention of hazards and pollution to the handling and management of different types of waste (MoLJ 1986). The Environment Protection Rules (hereinafter EPR), enacted in furtherance of the EPA, assign the following functions to SPCBs:

• identification and demarcation of excessively polluted industrial clusters as critically polluted industrial areas;
• gauging the assimilative capacity of receiving water bodies before permitting the discharge of effluents into them; and
• directing industries to install equipment to treat pollutants if they exceed the stipulated thresholds as provided under Schedules I, III, IV, and VI of the EPR.

A study of the schedules under the EPR (provided in Table 1) reveals further significant additions to the SPCBs’ workload.

Since 2000, starting with the Noise Pollution Rules, 11 new legislations have expanded SPCBs’ role in monitoring, implementation, inventory upkeep, and standards setting.

Table 1. Schedules under the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) that add to SPCB workloads

Source: CPCB. 2021b. Pollution Control Acts, Rules and Notifications Issued Thereunder. New Delhi: Central Pollution Control Board.

Notifications under the EPA have also led to a significant increase in the workload of SPCBs. The EIA Notification of 2006 requires SPCBs to conduct field visits for projects which have requested environmental clearance as well as public hearings to evaluate the impact on local communities (MoEFCC 2006). Similarly, the Coastal Regulation Zone

(CRZ) Notifications2 lay down stringent effluent discharge standards and consent-seeking provisions for projects in CRZ-notified areas, increasing the inspection and monitoring workload of SPCBs in coastal states (CPCB 2021b). These have been highlighted in Table 2.

Table 2. Notifications under the EPR that increased SPCB workloads

Source: CPCB. 2021b. Pollution Control Acts, Rules and Notifications Issued Thereunder. New Delhi: Central Pollution Control Board.

Furthermore, different notifications released periodically to address specific environmental concerns across states contribute to sporadic additions to the workload of the concerned SPCBs. Some examples include the following:

• the 1997 MoEFCC notification on constituting the Aquaculture Authority of India, which enjoined consultative functions on certain SPCBs;
• the 1999 MoEFCC notification on the utilisation of fly ash from coal-based thermal power plants, which specified monitoring functions for regional officers of SPCBs; and
• the 2010 MoEFCC notification that resulted in the constitution of the Bihar Ganga River Conservation Authority and made the Bihar SPCB chairperson an ex officio member of the body

As highlighted previously, the EPA is the parent act of various subordinate legislations. These include several rules related to the management and handling of different types of waste, which aim to regulate the generation, collection, storage, transportation, and disposal of waste in an environmentally sustainable manner. The first of these rules was introduced in the form of the Hazardous Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 1989. This grew to six sets of rules, each governing specific types of waste.

Table 3. Introduction of waste management rules

Source: CPCB. 2021b. Pollution Control Acts, Rules and Notifications Issued Thereunder. New Delhi: Central Pollution Control Board.

The year 2016 saw the introduction of new waste management rules by the Indian government, which were enacted in supersession to the earlier regulations mentioned in Table 3. These new rules included the following:

• Construction & Demolition Waste Management Rules, 2016 (hereinafter C&D Rules)
• Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 (hereinafter SWM Rules)
• Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016
• E-Waste Management Rules, 2016
• Hazardous Waste Management Rules, 2016
• Biomedical Waste Management Rules, 2016

While each set of waste management rules pertains to a specific kind of waste, the associated workloads are similar and can be grouped as follows:

• granting authorisations, approvals, registrations, no objection certificates, and CTE, CTO, and consent to transport for stakeholders handling waste;
• inspection of compliance and maintaining inventories of waste handlers;
• undertaking third-party audits of treatment plants and regulating the interstate movement of wastes; and
• carrying out programmes to inform citizens of waste management, and publishing compliance and field inspection reports (CPCB 2021b).

However, other than the major functions assigned to SPCBs under these rules and the aforementioned legislations and subordinate legislations, various other laws related to the increasing diversity of waste types have amplified their workload. The Manufacture, Use/Import/Export and Storage of Hazardous Microorganisms/Genetically Engineered Organisms or Cells (Rules, 1989) enjoins upon the member secretaries of SPCBs to be ex officio members of the state committees on biotechnology (CPCB 2021b). Similarly, the Chemical Accidents Rules, 1996, makes chairpersons of SPCBs a part of state crisis groups and requires every local crisis group to have an SPCB representative (CPCB 2021b). Furthermore, the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017, require member secretaries of SPCBs to serve as ex officio members of the state committee on biodiversity. Finally, the Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991, requires SPCBs to take cognisance of chemical-heavy industries in the state that fail to avail insurance under the act (MoEFCC 2015).

Although such requirements do not contribute to the core functions of SPCBs – which our interviewees identified as being related to consenting, inspection, and monitoring – they do add to the tasks expected to be performed by officials.

“Outsiders cannot know what the SPCBs do. It is very different from the inside. The functions performed by SPCBs derive from the various Rules, Regulations, etc. that have been drafted under the Air Act, Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Act. But the functions are not limited to those things alone, and PCB officials are often involved in responding to queries by the courts, NGT, and responding to questions raised in the Assemblies and the Parliament, RTI queries, etc.”

— ex-official, CPCB

Figure 2. Ever since their inception, the responsibilities of SPCBs have increased substantially

Source: CPCB. 2021b. Pollution Control Acts, Rules and Notifications Issued Thereunder. New Delhi: Central Pollution Control Board.

“RTIs and parliamentary/assembly questions and engagement also take time as the questions are data intensive. We are often asked to share data in formats we don’t internally maintain. We spend time formatting data for these things. This is more so for lower and mid-level officials. Such requests are considered high priority.”

— ex-official, Odisha SPCB

Apart from environmental laws, the Right to Information Act, 2005 (hereinafter RTI Act), has also added to the workload of SPCBs (MoLJ 2005). One of the interviewees pointed out, “the range of questions we receive as RTIs is wide. Some can be answered instantly like providing documents. Elaborate RTIs seeking data can take a lot of time because old data has not been digitised. We are trying to put all our documents online to reduce the burden of RTI.”

Similarly, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) Act, 2010 (hereinafter NGT Act), also adds to the workload of SPCBs (MoLJ 2010). While the act does not prescribe functions for SPCBs, the creation of a dedicated environmental tribunal has led to an increase in cases filed before the NGT where SPCBs are key litigants. Our interviewees pointed out that attending NGT hearings and complying with the tribunal’s orders also add to their workload.

An analysis of the existing legislation and subordinate legislations reveals that over 45 years, the workload of SPCBs has grown drastically from just regulating water quality to environmental protection and waste management. To manage their increased workload and improve operational efficiency, SPCBs have adopted several innovative measures. Examples of such innovations include outsourcing specialised work to external agencies and creating enforcement cells to increase financial resource availability.

However, to truly understand the workload–innovation relationship, an analysis of the actual workload, that is, activities undertaken by SPCBs, and the resources available to perform these activities is needed. Here, we cover a case study of the MPCB to understand how the increased workload for SPCBs has expanded the scope of services provided by them and whether this expansion has been met with graded increments in resource availability.

We analysed MPCB’s Online Consent Management & Monitoring System (OCMMS) portal. We selected MPCB due to the availability of legislation and application-wise data on the services provided by the board. While all SPCBs maintain this data on their own portals or on the MoEFCC’s OCMMS portal, the granularity provided by the MPCB allowed greater scrutiny (MPCB 2023; MoEFCC 2023a).

The MPCB’s OCMMS portal currently provides 20 services across nine different legislations and subordinate legislations. These are listed in Table 11. However, it is important to note that this is just a subset of the entire spectrum of the SPCB workload.

Table 11. Services provided by the Maharashtra State Pollution Control Board (MPCB)

Source: MPCB. 2023. “Maharashtra Pollution Control Board Dashboard.”

Between 2017 and 2022, the MPCB saw a nearly 28 per cent increase in total consents, authorisations, and applications, from 26,151 to 33,426 (MPCB 2023). During the same period, applications under the Water Act and the Air Act increased from 17,272 to 27,394 and those under the Hazardous Waste Rules increased from 416 to 566. Applications under the Biomedical Waste Rules decreased from 8,205 to 4,983 after peaking at 8,320 during 2021–22, and those under the Plastic Waste Rules also declined from 89 to 55. In contrast, applications under the Solid Waste Rules, E-Waste Rules, Batteries Rules, and C&D Rules increased from 62 to 112, 89 to 155, 12 to 133, and 6 to 28, respectively (MPCB 2023). Although there is a general increasing trend, it can be seen from Figure 5 that there is a decrease between 2019 and 2021, which may be attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Additional responsibilities, such as responding to queries from the CPCB and preparing official correspondence, add to daily workloads. Routine activities also include drafting project reports and attending to administrative tasks involving interactions with other departments and ministries.”

– ex-official, West Bengal Pollution Control Board

Figure 5. Maharashtra State Pollution Control Board registered a 28% increase in applications made between 2017 and 202212

Source: MPCB. 2023. “Maharashtra Pollution Control Board Dashboard.”

Processing applications for consenting, authorising, and registering is a crucial aspect of SPCBs’ workload, but only a part of it. Interviews with experts revealed that inspection is an equally vital task. As one interviewee mentioned, “Processing consent applications and doing inspections are the top priorities of SPCB leadership.”

SPCBs carry out inspections under the Water Act and the Air Act. As per the MPCB’s inspection policy, industries are inspected monthly, once in six months, quarterly, or annually, depending on their riskbased categorisation (GoM 2017). 13 The MPCB’s annual reports indicate that a steady increase in the number of industries also implies an increase in the number of inspections the board is required to carry out. (Figure 6)

Figure 6. Number of industries under Maharashtra State Pollution Control Board’s purview increased by 18% between 2017-18 to 2020-2114

Source: Authors’ compilation using data from the MPCB’s annual reports

Note: Industries are classified into Red, Orange, Green, and White categories by the Pollution Control Boards based on their pollution potential, with Red being the most polluting and White the least.

Although innovations in workload management are necessary to handle the increasing workload of SPCBs, it is the persistent understaffing that makes such innovations critical. Recent data presented by CPCB indicates that of the 839 posts sanctioned at the MPCB, 366–that is, 43.62 per cent of them–were vacant, highlighting a long-standing problem across SPCBs (CPCB 2024). The vacancy rates have also witnessed an increasing trend over the years (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Vacancy percentage in MPCB has increased by over 11% between 2018 and 2024

Source: MPCB. 2021. “Annual Report of Maharashtra Pollution Control Board 2020-21.” Mumbai: Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. and CPCB. 2024. Report of Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in OA No. 693 of 2023. National Green Tribunal.

Note: Data for the year 2022 could not be retrieved.

It is worth noting that high levels of vacancies are not exclusive to the MPCB. The CPCB’s report tabled before the National Green Tribunal indicates that 26 of 28 SPCBs have vacancies. Bihar SPCB has the highest rate of vacancy at 83.94 per cent of its total sanctioned strength, whereas Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland have no vacancies (CPCB 2024). The response also shows that the CPCB’s vacancies stand at 33.44 per cent. This reinforces the literature findings, which highlight understaffing as a persistent issue in pollution control boards. Figure 8 illustrates the vacancy rates across India’s SPCBs as well as Pollution Control Committees (PCCs).

Between 2018 and 2021, the MPCB’s consent and industrial data showed an increase in workload. Simultaneously, there was also an increase in the percentage of vacant positions in the board. During one of the interviews, an ex-official from Odisha SPCB explained, “The number of people we require depends on the number of industries under consent administration. Initially, hotels did not need consenting provisions. The NGT added them to the consenting framework. We had to monitor a few hundred industries and suddenly had thousands of hotels. By the time we recruit one batch, the need for the next lot is already there as the workload increases. There is a constant catch-up game in terms of workload and human resources.”

“While the manpower of the SPCBs is as per the functions under the Air and Water Act, the scope of their functions has expanded significantly over time. However, staffing levels have not kept pace with these growing mandates. This is a glaring gap in India’s pollution governance and warrants urgent attention.”

— ex-official, CPCB

Limitations

This study identifies the legally ascribed workload of SPCBs, the conditions that necessitate innovations, and the innovations that enable SPCBs to improve their workload management. However, it has a few limitations due to its methodological approach and data availability. We have identified the following limitations to our approach -

• Only workloads assigned by legislation and subordinate legislation were mapped, whereas work is also assigned through court judgements, internal protocols, and ad hoc instructions from the CPCB, which we have not considered in this study. Several interviewees highlighted judicial documentation, RTI responses, and legislative inquiries as critical components of their workload. We did not capture such workload due to the paucity of data. However, a comprehensive analysis of the workload of PCBs should encompass these sources.
• The annual reports of SPCBs were used as secondary literature to identify innovations. SPCBs are required by law to report their activities to the state legislature, and we found many innovative practices listed throughout these reports. However, because the legislation does not mandate including such innovations in the annual report, we could have missed out on those that were not mentioned. Additionally, we also assumed that the data provided in the annual report is accurate and provides a complete picture of the status and progress of the SPCBs. We believe that to truly understand the workload-innovation relationship, an analysis of the actual workload, that is, activities undertaken by SPCBs and the resources available with them to carry out these activities is needed.
• We limited our study to states which published annual reports over three consecutive financial years and selected those with similar content and presentation. Consequently, innovations carried out by SPCBs that do not meet these criteria were missed out.
• There are issues with the different criteria for classifying innovations in public-sector organisations that have been proposed earlier. They have been criticised for being designed from the perspective of the private sector, being inward in outlook and not covering collaborative innovations, having conceptual overlaps across categories, and being created without a coherent set of parameters (Hartley 2005; Damanpour and Aravind 2012; Ansell and Torfing 2014; Chen, Walker, and Sawhney 2019).

These limitations are stated here to underscore that we have created innovation categories specific to SPCBs, based on their functions and the obstacles faced by them. These categories are not universally applicable to public-sector organisations and are unique to the Indian pollution regulation ecosystem.

Recommendations

Our review of the annual reports of the selected SPCBs led to the discovery of several innovative practices that can be adopted by SPCBs across the country. These innovations can be categorised as short-term innovations, which can be adopted immediately due to the availability of required technologies, mediumterm innovations, which require input from external organisations or further desk research, and long-term innovations, which will require the creation of new platforms and processes. In this chapter, we highlight key recommendations that SPCBs can incorporate within the course of their functioning to ensure efficacious workload management.

7.1 Short-term recommendations

Creating a knowledge-sharing platform: Crosslearning and knowledge sharing among SPCBs can catalyse the adoption of innovations. A platform to facilitate the exchange of innovations and best practices across states could be anchored by the CPCB and/or a group of officers from a few SPCBs. Such exchanges should be organised periodically to ensure that information is constantly shared and up to date.

- Automation: We understand automation as innovations that reduce human intervention in a particular task. This is particularly relevant due to the scarcity of human resources in SPCBs. Many examples of automation-based innovations were found among the six types of innovations discussed in the annual reports. Those that can be adopted in the short term include the following:

• Office automation systems for a paperless office
• Auto-renewing consents based on risk profile and compliance records/accreditations of industries
• Visit schedulers to assign inspection responsibilities to officers
• Automated messaging services to send warnings and instructions to non-compliant industries

- Harnessing modern monitoring technologies: SPCBs are entrusted with the responsibility of monitoring polluters, pollution levels, and areas with pollution. These are human resource–intensive activities. However, several technologies to facilitate monitoring have emerged, and some, such as OCEMS and video surveillance cameras, have already been adopted by most states. Our review of annual reports found several instances of modern technologies being used to reduce the physical workload associated with monitoring. Monitoring technologies that can be implemented in the short term are as follows:

• Machine learning–based network for continuous air quality monitoring and prediction (as adopted by Goa)
• UAVs to monitor industrial pollution and GIS for surveillance (as adopted by Karnataka, Maharashtra, and West Bengal)
• GPS to track waste movement (as adopted by Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh)

7.2 Medium-term recommendations

Rationalising processes: SPCBs can use these processes to identify areas of inefficiency, reduce duplication of efforts, and optimise resource allocation, thus resulting in better workload management. Seven out of the nine selected SPCBs have made significant alterations to their processes using technology, communication, and new protocols. Examples of such rationalisation measures include

• using the remote calibration check technique to ensure data accuracy and instrument reliability without physically accessing equipment;
• creating industry- and application-specific templates to facilitate online consent administration;
• stipulating minimum documents for processing consent and authorisation applications; and
• creating online redressal systems for registering public complaints.

Delegating functions: Annual reports show that SPCBs often leverage the expertise of third parties, which include not just the private sector, but also other government departments and research institutions. Such engagements have been proven to cut costs and enhance output. Furthermore, the human resource deficits that several SPCBs experience can be met via such engagements. Delegation efforts that are replicable across SPCBs in the medium term include

• advising manufacturers/enterprises to publish biannual newspaper ads to raise public awareness of environmental issues;
• operating CAAQMS systems via PPPs;
• conducting research on pollution and associated areas by collaborating with universities and relevant organisations;
• introducing an environment audit scheme with engineering colleges as auditors, thus decreasing the workload while ensuring that it is in responsible hands.

One of the interviewees highlighted that the delegation of functions had been a major success during his tenure. He observed, “During my time we hired 150 new people. But it will never increase proportionately to workload. We outsourced lots of our work to consulting labs. So, the burden of monitoring was reduced. Because consenting is the only thing we could not outsource, so we tried outsourcing everything else. This ensured that no technical staff is engaged in non-technical work. We essentially re-arranged the human resources available to us. We increased the revenue and used it to outsource. We put a lot of effort to make sure those we outsourced our work to were responsible.”

• Preparing repositories of innovative practices: Creating a dedicated space to highlight successful innovations on SPCB websites is recommended. This space will serve as a repository of innovative ideas, best practices, and success stories. It will inform and inspire other states and actors involved in environmental management. An example is the Best Environmental Management Practices bulletin available on the CPCB’s website (CPCB 2021a). While this is maintained sparingly at present, such initiatives can help nurture a culture of innovation within SPCBs and encourage the adoption of best practices.
• Regular annual reporting: SPCBs are legally mandated to prepare annual reports under Section 39 (2) of the Water Act and Section 35 (2) of the Air Act (MoLJ 1974, 1981). Such reporting exercises will enhance SPCBs’ compliance with the acts, allow them to reflect on what could have been done differently, and enable better planning, resource allocation, and decision-making. The CPCB has urged SPCBs to release their annual reports regularly to ensure that the CPCB’s national status reports can be published on time (CPCB 2020). The Comptroller and Auditor General of India emphasises that enhanced governmental accounting and financial reporting can lead to improved accountability and decision-making (CAG 2022). Regular reporting not only recapitulates past performance but also provides insights for optimising value creation (OECD 2022). However, annual reporting must include all information relevant to assess the performance of an organisation on its mandated workload (Lee 2008). Hence, consistency in reporting across SPCBs is crucial for self-assessment and will also enable cross-learning between states. Schedule III of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Rules, 1982, provides a template that the SPCBs’ annual reports can adhere to (MoLJ 1982). 15This template is already in use by Karnataka and Goa. Other SPCBs can create and use similar templates to enhance the comprehensiveness and coherence of their reports.

7.3 Long-term recommendations

• Promoting innovation through frameworks and data: To enhance the effectiveness of SPCBs in mitigating pollution, we recommend creating an innovation risk framework that incorporates transparent risk governance and involves board officials, citizens, and other relevant stakeholders. This framework should balance the risks and potential benefits of innovations and promote a culture of risk awareness and learning. Collecting comparable data on innovation for SPCBs and industry sectors can provide valuable insights into their interconnection and add to organisational innovations in SPCBs. Such data can enable board officials to identify innovations that require inputs from multiple actors, thereby promoting collaborative approaches to address challenges (Osborne et al. 2020; Kapuscinska and Matejun 2014; Arundel, Bloch, and Ferguson 2019).