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Project Scope & Coverage | How is this publication different?
Background Documents/ Papers | Future Direction & Co-operation | Further Reading
Forthcoming publication, ‘Government at a Glance’, available October 2009
Good governance is critical to long-term economic, social and environmental development. However, evaluating government activities and performance is challenging due to the limited availability of comparative data. Best practices are rarely definable and are often based on subjective assessments.
Against this background the OECD is launching a new biennial publication – ‘Government at a Glance’
This publication builds on the OECD’s expertise in mapping and analysing public management practices, processes and institutions providing over 30 indicators describing key elements underlying government performance. It will help countries better understand their practices and assess, plan and measure public sector reforms. In the longer term, it will contribute to the OECD-wide lesson learning process concerning sector efficiency and institutional effectiveness.
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Project Scope and Coverage
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With a focus on public administration, 'Government at a Glance' provides a 'suite' of datasets across the 30 OECD member countries that include information on:
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institutions and administrative structures;
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revenues;
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budgeting and public expenditures;
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e-government;
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fighting corruption;
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public employment and management; and
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regulatory reform and management.
In addition, it introduces several composite indexes summarising key aspects of public management practices in the areas of human resource management, budgeting and regulatory management.
Broadly, 'Government at a Glance' comprises measures of both the market and non-market activities of government and government-owned enterprises. This is known as the public sector and includes what the System of National Accounts recognises as general government and the government owned part of the (quasi-) corporate sector.
The publication is primarily based on OECD data, which are provided by member country government officials via OECD questionnaires. When OECD data were not available, the publication used international data from the European Commission, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations.
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How is this publication different from other data sets?
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Unique access to governments; data collected from government officials and have a practitioner focus.
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Introduces composite indicators summarising key aspects of public management practices.
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No single 'super' indicator to evaluate overall government performance.
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Documents building towards 'Government at a Glance'
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OECD initiated the Government at a Glance project in 2005, and the forthcoming publication is based on a series of working papers and technical papers that establish a theoretical framework for the project and identify the datasets that are featured in the publication.
These papers have been combined and summarised in the publication Measuring Government Activity (2009), a technical companion to Government at a Glance that introduces the comprehensive data classification and analysis framework used in the project and discusses in detail the challenges of output and outcome measurement in the public sector.
Working Papers
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The first working paper, " Towards Better Measurement of Government", reviews the project’s approach and sets out 52 datasets on core areas of public management providing comparative data across the OECD.
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The second working paper "Towards Government at a Glance" recommends that the main focus of the publication be on public administration and further refines the list of core data sets that might be included in the publication.
Technical Papers
Four accompanying technical papers set out details of the ambitious scope and rigorous classification schemes devised for the project and offer a way forward concerning further data collection in the hard-to-measure areas of public sector outputs and outcomes.
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Technical Paper 2: “ Issues in Output Measurement for Government at a Glance” contains a discussion of current issues regarding the measurement of non-financial outputs within the public sector. It suggests that non-financial outputs are classified according to the basis of measurement, the use made of the output measures, and their relationship to decision-making in government.
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Technical Paper 3: “ Issues in Outcome Measurement for Government at a Glance” suggests that a series of “executive governance outcomes” be developed, which are primarily related to the activities of the executive branch of government. These might be broadly of three types: public confidence, equity and fiscal/economic stability.
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Technical Paper 4: "Institutional Drivers of Efficiency in the Public Sector" sets out theoretical proposition and summarizes the existing empirical evidence on the impact of various institutional arrangements on efficiency in the public sector. It groups those arrangements into four categories: results orientation; strengthening competitive pressures; increased flexibility and workforce arrangements.
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Future Direction and Co-operation
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Constructing 'Government at a Glance' is a major task. The development of the project’s methodology has been overseen by three informal editorial groups comprising leading government and academic experts drawn from across the OECD and in close collaboration with other OECD Directorates (most particularly the Economics Department, the Development Centre and the Statistics Directorate).
Intended to be a biennial publication, future editions of Government at a Glance will build upon the core indicators introduced in the first edition of the publication, updating the data at regular intervals. These time series data enable governments to compare their institutional arrangements and performance to other OECD countries both at one point in time and over time; to shed light on the possible causes of performance differences among governments; and to facilitate more in-depth analysis of the impact of public sector reforms.
In addition to collecting time series data on key indicators included in the first edition, the next edition of Government at a Glance may focus on three main methodological areas:
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Identify and collect data that better measure the full scope of government activity in the economy and facilitate comparisons of how governments produce goods and services. This includes how responsibilities are shared across levels of government as well as the involvement of the private sector in producing government-funded goods and services (e.g. through outsourcing).
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Begin to compare government productivity and effectiveness across countries by identifying indicators of the quality and volume of inputs (such as the labour force), and selected outputs and outcomes.
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Improve the quality of existing data.
For further information please contact: gov.contact@oecd.org.
Also available are the following previous report and its annex:
Permanent URL: www.oecd.org/gov/indicators
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