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Foreword from Professor Ngaire Woods, Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
Our vision at the Blavatnik School of Government is of a world better led, better served and better governed, and our mission is to inspire and support better government and public policy around the world. Over the course of 2024 more countries have had elections and more people have participated in those elections than any other year in history. I am delighted that alumni of the School have stood as candidates and been elected to represent their countries and communities. While each election is different, at their core are questions of outcomes and competence, and whether the government is able to deliver what people want and need.
Through the Blavatnik Index of Public Administration we aim to help countries better understand how their public administrations and central civil services compare with others. We have seen how such comparisons help leaders set a pathway to an ever stronger, functioning, and capable bureaucracy.
The Blavatnik Index builds on the School’s previous collaboration on the International Civil Service Effectiveness (InCiSE) Index from 2016-2020. Five years on from the 2019 InCiSE Index report much has changed, not least due to the Covid-19 pandemic but also increases in armed conflict around the world, ever more extreme impacts of climate change, and the rising adoption of AI in many different fields. These changes present both challenges and opportunities, so it is imperative that the public administrations that support governments in achieving both their long-term and day-to-day objectives are the best they can be.
The Blavatnik Index provides a refreshed framework for thinking about the qualities and functions of central government, and provides countries with a tool to assess their relative strengths and weaknesses. We have been able to extend coverage from the 38 OECD countries covered by the 2019 InCiSE Index to 120 countries.
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.
We are still only at the beginning of this journey: 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. Some aspects of our framework such as openness or integrity have several sources of data covering many countries, while others, such as procurement or collaboration, are much more difficult to measure or have data limited to specific sets of countries. A secondary aim in compiling the Index is to promote dialogue about and encourage further collection of data so that over time we can develop a more rounded picture about how public administrations function.
We are grateful to all those have given their time to shape our approach to the new Index, especially the serving and former officials who have been part of our Senior Leadership Panel and generously shared their time and insights to help ensure that the Index can be a useful and usable tool. I would like particularly to thank Lord Gus O’Donnell, former UK Cabinet Secretary, for chairing the panel. We are also grateful to the many organisations that collect and make available the underlying data the Index is based on; it is only through their work that it has been possible to produce the Index.
I began by talking about our alumni who seek elected office, but many more of our alumni are civil servants in public administrations, or or work with public administrations through their roles in multilateral institutions and non-governmental organisations. The Blavatnik Index is dedicated to them and their determination to deliver good government for their communities.
Lord Gus O’Donnell, former UK Cabinet Secretary
I am delighted that the Blavatnik School of Government has launched the Blavatnik Index of Public Administration, building on the experiences of the previous InCiSE Index. As a former Cabinet Secretary, I know how important it is to understand how your civil service is performing on strategy, policy, delivery and its people and processes. The Blavatnik Index provides this generation of public administration leaders with a valuable tool to help them better understand and monitor how their administration compares globally. I hope it encourages them to engage with their peers, to share best practice from their country and to learn from others.
Lord Gus O’Donnell, former UK Cabinet Secretary and chair of the Blavatnik Index’s Senior Leadership Panel