Norway came in second, with Canada and Denmark sharing the third spot, followed by Finland in fifth. The United Kingdom ranked joint sixth with New Zealand. Australia was eighth, while the United States shared ninth place with Estonia, France, and Spain.
The next highest-ranked Asian country was South Korea, in 15th position.
Professor Ngaire Woods, dean of the Blavatnik School of Government, called the results “a clarion call” for policymakers to catalyse improvements and a “golden opportunity” for civil services to look beyond their borders to learn from each other.
“We see real value in the Index not only in what the results show but also the conversations, learning and improvement that it can prompt and spur, enabling a more data-informed approach to public administration reform,” she added.
METHODOLOGY
The study drew on 82 data points, or metrics, from 17 different sources.
The 82 metrics were spread out across the four domains: Strategy and leadership, public policy, national delivery, as well as people and processes.
Each of these domains was made up of themes. For example, cross-government collaboration would be assessed under the strategy and leadership domain, while the use of data would fall under the public policy domain. Singapore’s excellence in border services and tax administration would help the country top the national delivery domain.
The data came from a variety of sources that included: The World Bank’s Doing Business report; Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer, which measures public opinions of corruption; and the European Institute for Gender Equality’s Gender Statistics Database.
Source: CNA
