|
Analysis of public management reforms has been hampered by the lack of good-quality comparative information. In the absence of good data, assessments of progress made and opportunities for learning from other countries’ experiences remain limited. In consequence, public management reforms have been driven significantly by assumptions concerning “best practices” rarely defined precisely. Although there is a significant growth in broad measures of “governance”, most of these data are based on subjective assessments and have little relevance for public management. There are few terms and definitions applied consistently, further undermining public administration debate.
Against this background, GOV launched a project under the working title “Management in Government: Comparative Country Data” in November 2005. The project plans a series of annual working papers, building towards the first publication of “Government at a Glance” in late 2009. This planned biennial publication will provide a set of key indicators of good government and efficient public services to help member countries to better assess, plan and measure their public sector reform agenda. It will help governments and other analysts in two main ways:
-
For individual countries, it will enable robust benchmarking using common units of analysis, facilitating a structured practitioner dialogue.
-
Longer term, it will contribute to the OECD-wide lesson learning process concerning:
-
Sector efficiency and institutional effectiveness, providing insights into the results of service provision via different institutional and managerial arrangements.
-
Observed relationships (what kind of changes in public sector processes are associated with changes in public sector results).
-
Absorptive capacity (the impact on productivity of softer budget constraints following significant increases in sector expenditures).
This project will:
- Provide a "suite" of separate datasets across OECD countries ("Government at a Glance")
- Provide the best information to hand, enabling governments to compare their systems with others
- Ensure that existing surveys are focused and better co-ordinated
The project will not:
-
Provide any overall, single score measure
-
Rank or evaluate countries on the basis of overall government performance
-
Increase the burden of surveys on member governments
Project Scope
Broadly, "Government at a Glance" will comprise 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. However, and somewhat experimentally, it also pays attention to other activities which are undertaken outside of core governmental structures and that are only partly funded through taxation or other public sector revenues (including a new classification of "private sector in the public domain" ). The significance of this domain is its size and the potentially significant contingent fiscal liability that it represents for government.
Coverage
The project will encompass six categories of variables: revenues; inputs; public sector processes; outputs; outcomes; and antecedents or constraints that contextualise government efficiency and effectiveness.
The project’s approach is incremental, starting from existing data and statistics and gathering new data when and if necessary and at minimal cost. By publishing regularly all available data with a cautious phased approach, the OECD will create a high profile locus, which brings together all relevant comparative data of appropriate quality. This development would also highlight gaps in available data, encouraging governments, professional bodies, research institutes and other academic institutions to undertake further data collection.
Documents building towards "Government at a Glance"
In November 2006, the Public Governance Committee agreed upon the publication of the first in a series of working and technical papers on the phased approach towards gathering better data on efficient government and public administration.
-
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.
-
The working paper "Towards Government at a Glance" is the second in a series of three annual papers that the OECD is publishing in preparation for its major biennial publication, Government at a Glance. This paper focuses on two main themes: (1) the identification of core data for Government at a Glance, and (2) the publication of existing data that help assess the efficiency of government. It recommends that the main focus of the future publication should be on public administration.
Three 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 output and outcome.
-
-
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.
-
Technical Paper 3: “ Issues in Outcome Measurement for Government at a Glance” suggests that a series of “executive governance outcomes” are 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.
-
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.
Co-operation and Future Direction
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). This Working Paper and the associated Technical Papers are, hopefully, a contribution to an active debate amongst practitioners, policy-makers and academics. Following approval of the project strategy at the OECD Public Governance Committee meeting on 31 October 2006, a steering group is being established drawing on technical experts and leading academics.
Comments and interpretations on the data and on the approach proposed for “Government at a Glance” are welcome at: gov.indicators@oecd.org.
For further information please contact: gov.contact@oecd.org.
Also available are the following previous report and its annex:
Management in government: Feasibility study on the development of comparative country data
Management in government: Feasibility study on the development of comparative country data: Technical annexes
|
