Comparing Public Administrations. An assessment of the quality and efficiency of public administration in Ireland compared with selected European and OECD countries

摘要

In recent years, there have been a number of attempts to compare theefficiency and performance of the public sector across countries.International ranking has become a popular activity. This paperlooks at existing data from a number of international sources on thequality of public administration provision. In terms of tentativefindings arising from the analysis, a number of general points emerge:- Ireland tends to come out of the analysis of the quality and efficiencyof public administration relatively well, particularly when using themost recent data available. Ireland is in with a cluster of countries –Austria, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands andSweden in the EU, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway andSwitzerland of other OECD countries – that tend to consistentlyscore well across the range of indicators examined here.- Ireland ranks particularly well against the indicators examiningregulatory quality and efficiency.- Denmark and Finland tend to consistently be ranked particularlyhighly across the range of indicators examined. Of the newer EUmember states, Estonia consistently scores well.However, significant limitations with regard to data reliability andvalidity hamper the drawing of meaningful conclusions from theanalysis. The ‘state of the art’ of measuring public administrationperformance is not at a stage where clear judgements can be made.With these limitations in mind, the paper outlines some steps thatcan be taken to improve the international comparative database.