Singapore tops global civil service ranking
Singapore has come out on top of a new ranking of the performance of 120 public administrations around the world, with Denmark, Canada, Norway and Finland completing the top five.
The new index, which has been produced by the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, rates countries on four themes – strategy and leadership, public policy, national delivery, and people and processes.
Singapore leads the rankings due to excelling in areas such as border services, tax administration, and innovation strategies and practices.
The United Kingdom ranks joint sixth alongside New Zealand, with Australia just behind in eighth place. The United States shares joint ninth place with Estonia, France and Spain.
Leo Yip, head of Singapore’s civil service, said that he was “humbled” that Singapore’s public administration was highly rated 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. 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.
Clarion call for governments
As civil services worldwide look to deliver on new political priorities in a shifting global landscape, the Blavatnik Index aims to provide a benchmarking and peer learning initiative to help senior officials, those leading reform efforts and other stakeholders understand how public administrations and civil services around the world compare.
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.
The index was overseen by a senior leadership panel, which was chaired by Lord Gus O’Donnell, the former UK cabinet secretary who also led Global Government Forum’s Making Government Work project.
Read more: Exclusive Global Government Forum research reveals five pillars of a modern civil service
Reflecting on his own experience in government, Lord O’Donnell noted that the Blavatnik Index was a “valuable tool” to help civil services “better understand and monitor how their administration compares globally”.
The open source tool is intended to catalyse peer learning, transparency and continuous improvement in public administrations across the globe. As well as the overall international index, the results are broken down by income groups and regions to help spur collaboration among peer countries.
The findings from the review will be discussed at upcoming Global Government Forum events – the Global Government Summit and Innovation 2025. Find out more and register your interest for each event.
About Richard Johnstone
Richard Johnstone is the executive editor of Global Government Forum, where he helps to produce editorial analysis and insight for the title’s audience of public servants around the world. Before joining GGF, he spent nearly five years at UK-based title Civil Service World, latterly as acting editor, and has worked in public policy journalism throughout his career.
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