The International Civil Service Effectiveness (InCiSE) Index is the first comprehensive index of international indicators of civil service effectiveness. It aims to assess the performance of central civil services around the world.
An effective civil service can play an important role in determining a country’s progress and prosperity, and the InCiSE Index’s core objective is to help countries determine how their central civil services are performing, and to learn from each other.
Building on the lessons learned during the 2017 pilot phase, the 2019 InCiSE Index is an improved index featuring refined methodology and increased volume of metrics and range of data sources.
The 2019 InCiSE Index covers 38 countries (seven more than in the previous version) and uses 46 more metrics and 5 more data sources than previously. We have also explored ways of including non-OECD countries and developing countries. To this end, the Blavatnik School has completed two country case studies, Brazil and Nigeria, to assess potential for the InCiSE Index to be used in contexts where data availability is more challenging.
The full 2019 Index, its technical report and both technical papers on Brazil and Nigeria are available for download on the right hand-side.
The InCiSE Index can be used:
- as a performance improvement tool for civil service leaders to find out which countries perform best in which areas and learn from them;
- as an accountability tool which allows citizens, government officials and politicians to find out how well their civil service is performing.
We recognise the important role central civil services can play in determining a country’s progress and prosperity, and our priority is to secure long-term funding to enable the InCiSE project to expand further. We see the InCiSE Index as a learning and performance improvement tool for governments around the world, and the goal is to produce it on a regular basis and to increase country coverage while maintaining data quality.
About the Index
The InCiSE Index is a collaboration between the Blavatnik School of Government and the Institute for Government. It is supported by the UK Civil Service and has been funded by the Open Society Foundations.
The Index is focused on the central government civil service, not the public service more generally. It does not aim to be definitive and it is not possible to directly compare scores between the 2017 and 2019 results.
The InCiSE index has been designed on a framework developed in discussion with officials from national governments, international organisations, civil society partners and academics. This framework defines 17 functions and attributes that contribute to civil service effectiveness - at present, due to data availability, only 12 have been included in the index. These functions and attributes, collectively called indicators, are then disaggregated into individual metrics.
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