The Global Survey of Public Servants: Evidence from 1,300,000 Public Servants in 1,300 Government Institutions in 23 Countries

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• Author: Christian Schuster,Kim Sass Mikkelsen,Daniel Rogger,Francis Fukuyama,Zahid Hasnain,Dinsha Mistree,Jan Meyer‐Sahling,Katherine Bersch,Kerenssa Kay
• Date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13611

VIEWPOINT ARTICLE

The Global Survey of Public Servants: Evidence from 1,300,000

Public Servants in 1,300 Government Institutions in 23 Countries

Christian Schuster

1

|Kim Sass Mikkelsen

2

|Daniel Rogger

3

|

Francis Fukuyama

4

|Zahid Hasnain

3

|Dinsha Mistree

5

|Jan Meyer-Sahling

6

|

Katherine Bersch

7

|Kerenssa Kay

3

1

School of Public Policy, University College

London, London, UK

2

Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

3

World Bank, Washington, DC, USA

4

Freeman Spogli Institute for International

Studies, Stanford University, Stanford,

California, USA

5

Hoover Institution and Law School, Stanford

University, Stanford, California, USA

6

University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

7

Davidson College, Davidson, North

Carolina, USA

Correspondence

Daniel Rogger, World Bank, Washington, DC,

USA.

Email: drogger@worldbank.org

Abstract

Understanding how public administrations around the world function and differ is

crucial for strengthening their effectiveness. Most comparative measures of bureau-

cracy rely on surveys of experts, households, or firms, rather than directly question-

ing bureaucrats.Direct surveys of public officials create granular data for analysis

and government action, so are becoming a cornerstone of public sector manage-

ment. This article introduces the Global Survey of Public Servants (GSPS), a global

initiative to collect and harmonize large-scale, comparable survey data on public ser-

vants. The corresponding GSPS data set currently contains responses from 1,300,000

+bureaucrats in 1,300+government institutions in 23 countries. The surveys mea-

sure both employee attitudes (such as job satisfaction and motivation), and their

experience with management practices (such as recruitment and performance man-

agement). This harmonized data enables governments to benchmark themselves

and scholars to study comparative publicadministration and the state differently,

based on micro-data fromactors who experience government first-hand.

Evidence for practice

•As a step towards strengthened availability of harmonized but granular data on

public administration around the world, the Global Survey of Public Servants

(GSPS) brings together surveys based on responses from over 1,300,000 public

servants in over 1,300 government institutions in 23 countries. The intention of

the GSPS is to encourage further surveying of public officials, in a consistent way

where possible, and the sharing of that survey data for the benefit of researchers

and public sector managers around the world.

•By implementing the Global Survey of Public Servants core module, govern-

ments can generate comparable data on their public service. This facilitates the

benchmarking of units, organizations, and the service as a whole to international

comparators in key management practices and employee attitudes, such as job

satisfaction or work motivation.

•The Global Survey of Public Servants also enables governments to compare the

methodological choices they have made in their survey approach toother surveys

and better appreciate the trade-offs of those choices.As such, the GSPS hopes to

strengthen the quality of public servant survey data, and in turn the understand-

ing of strategic areas for development inside public administration. By improving

the quality of benchmarks across different institutions inside government and

across different groups of public servants (e.g., comparing public servants of differ-

ent gender or ranks), government’s capacity to strengthen itself is improved.

Received: 19 September 2022Revised: 18 January 2023Accepted: 26 January 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13611

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permitsuse, distribution and reproduction in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

© 2023 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

982 Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:982–993.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar