Singapore's civil service ranked world's best in Oxford University study

The Blavatnik Index of Public Administration, released by the Blavatnik School of Government - Oxford University's school of public policy - compares the performance of civil services and public administrations worldwide.

“Singapore emerges at the top of the rankings, excelling in areas such as border services, tax administration, and innovation strategies and practices,” said the university in a release on Tuesday (Dec 3).

The Blavatnik Index builds upon the school’s previous International Civil Service Effectiveness (InCiSE) Index.

Its measurement framework is structured around four domains that represent broad areas of public administration activity: Strategy and leadership, public policy, national delivery, and people and processes.

Head of Civil Service Leo Yip said he was humbled that Singapore’s public administration was rated well in the inaugural index.

"We in the Singapore civil service have learned so much from the best practice of counterparts and public services around the world," he said.

"The Index is an important effort to help us learn from one another and improve our own effectiveness, in order to serve our peoples better", he added.

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.

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.

The Blavatnik Index does not measure policy outcomes such as life expectancy or literacy rates. The assumption the index makes is that for two countries with the same goal, the country with the "better" civil service should achieve better outcomes.

The rankings also steered clear of the wider aspects of public governance such as the legislature, the judiciary, media and academic freedom. These elements, according to Blavatnik, are considerations for political rather than administrative actors.

“The available comparative data about the qualities and functions of public administrations is not as complete as we would like it to be, but just because the data is not perfect does not mean it has no utility,” said Professor Woods.

She added that a secondary aim in compiling the index is to promote dialogue and encourage further collection of data, so that a more "rounded picture" about how public administrations function can be developed over time.

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This article is republished from Channel News Asia (CNA)