The Global Survey of Public Servants

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• GGP: Global Governance Programme

Join this lecture as Professor Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling explores how harmonised data enables scholars to study comparative public administration.

Understanding how public administrations around the world function and differ is crucial for strengthening their effectiveness. Recognising the importance of public administration, the European Union has made public administration reform a condition for accession and, most recently, part of the first cluster of chapters that Western Balkan countries have to meet on their road to membership. However, official assessments of public administration tend to rely on legislation, administrative data and surveys of experts, households, or firms rather than directly questioning bureaucrats. Addressing this omission, our worldwide research of public administration brings together surveys of over 1.3 million public officials from 23 countries as a tool to measure the quality of public administration and to provide actionable insights for governments around the world, including the accession countries of the Western Balkans.

The Global Survey of Public Servants (GSPS) measures employee attitudes such as job satisfaction and motivation, and their experience with management practices such as recruitment, career advancement and performance management. The project discusses how harmonised data enables governments to benchmark themselves and scholars to study comparative public administration and highlight the significance of these data for measuring and assisting public administration reforms in the Western Balkans and the European Union neighborhood.

The Global Survey of Public Servants is a joint initiative of the World Bank, Stanford University, University College London and the University of Nottingham.