Blavatnik Index of Public Administration

The Blavatnik Index of Public Administration was published by the Blavatnik School of Government in 2024 and provides a comparative analysis of the functions and characteristics of national level civil services and public administrations in 120 countries. The Blavatnik Index builds on the previous International Civil Service Effectiveness (InCiSE) Index, that I also worked on between 2017 and 2020.

Whereas other comparative analyses of public governance tend to focus on the quality of democracy, the rule of law and/or policy outcomes, the Blavatnik Index (like the predecessor InCiSE Index) aims to assess the administrative functions of national governments – the world of the officials and functionaries rather than that of politics and politicians.

The Blavatnik Index is calculated from 82 data points taken from 17 different sources published by multilateral institutions, academics and civil society researchers. The source data is aligned against a framework that defines four high-level domains: stategy and leadership; public policy; national delivery; and, people and processes.

As a result of improvements in the data landscape the Blavatnik Index covers 120 countries across geographic, income and population levels, compared to the 2019 InCiSE Index which assessed only 38 high income countries. The results, methodology and source code are fully available, published under the CC-BY and MIT licenses. The results and methodology are available on the Index’s dedicated website and the source code is available on Github.