Canada’s civil service is world’s most effective, study concludes
Canada’s public service is the most effective in the world, according to the results of a new British study that compares the performance of government workforces in 31 countries.
Canada topped the rankings based on its overall score for performance measures such as tax administration, policy making, inclusiveness, openness, integrity, crisis management, and fiscal and financial management.
New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Norway, Korea and the U.S. rounded out the top 10 list, which represents the first attempt to compare bureaucracies worldwide.
Among the lowest scoring bureaucracies were those in Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, the Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal and Turkey.
Canada was praised for having a highly-educated government workforce with “a good representation of women, ethnic and religious groups.”
“It’s a good-news story, and it’s interesting, when you put that in parallel with the public’s perception of civil servants because, generally, they think we’re a bunch of lazy people,” said Emmanuelle Tremblay, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, which represents 13,000 federal economists, policy analysts, research assistants, translators, statisticians and interpreters.
Chris Aylward, national executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said the study speaks to the dedication of the country’s public servants — and the need to stop contracting out government services.
“We’re not surprised, but we’re very pleased to hear that Canada’s civil service ranks at the top in this survey,” Aylward said. “They’re proud of the work they do.”
The study, known as the International Civil Service Effectiveness Index, was prepared by researchers from Oxford University and the Institute for Government, a U.K. think-tank.
The researchers assessed government bureaucracies on eight core functions and four key attributes. Data for the initial study was incomplete, the researchers warned, and will be refined in future years.
Canada was ranked third in the world for human resources management on the strength of its meritocratic hiring system, and also scored well on policy making and regulation. Its lowest ranking (20th) came in the area of tax administration — a reflection of the country’s relatively slow adoption of digital services.
Canada was among the top five nations for three of the four “attributes” measured: capability, integrity and inclusiveness. On the fourth attribute, openness, Canada’s civil service ranked ninth worldwide.
“Canada’s openness score, although well above the average, suggests there may be some lessons to learn from the leading countries concerning the rightto-information theme, as well as the availability and accessibility of government data,” the report concluded.
When researchers adjusted each country’s overall score based on GDP per capita, Canada’s civil service fell to fifth worldwide, behind top-ranked Estonia, Mexico, New Zealand and Korea.
Estonia held the top position because of its world-class tax administration and its extensive suite of digital services.
The effectiveness index was financed by the Open Society Foundations, an organization launched by billionaire George Soros to support democracy-building efforts worldwide.
The civil service index was created to help government leaders understand how their public servants are performing compared to those in other countries. This matters, the researchers argued, because civil servants play such a vital role in a country’s development.
The index will be published annually during the next four years; researchers are hoping to add more countries to the list while broadening the scope of their assessment tool.
Tremblay said the study suggests too many Canadians take their civil service for granted. “And remember,” she said, “you have tens of thousands of public servants who have not been paid, or appropriately paid, and continue to show up at work with a sense of duty and service. So I think it’s particularly a good-news story for all these wounded public servants.”
Scores of federal employees have experienced problems with their paycheques since the Phoenix pay system was introduced in early 2016 before it was ready to handle the massive task. The system administers pay for more than 290,000 employees across 98 federal organizations.
We’re not surprised, but we’re very pleased to hear that Canada’s civil service ranks at the top in this survey.