# **The Route to Better Surveys**

As indicated by the paucity of data on organizations themselves in section 3, the unit of observation in any surveying effort should at least be the organization and the individuals inside it, or a representative sample of them. A more refined surveying effort would also try to understand how the unit fits within the department, and the department within the organization. Beyond these, surveys that better mapped how different organizations related and supported, or constrained, each other would be of substantial benefit to our understanding of the architecture of the service.

There are a host of topics that were not addressed in this paper due to their absence in the underlying surveys. What is the level of teamship or cohesion between officials? Do what extent do people become socially connected as they move through the service? Who do they go to resolve a problem, and to what extent are these vertical or horizontal relationships? Each reader will have their own concerns over what was excluded. Beyond individual topics, surveying should also focus on the interconnectedness or ‘system’ nature of the civil service. If an official takes an action in one part of the service, its effects can ripple through the bureaucracy. For example, once an official in one part of the public service breaks a de jure public service rule and goes unpunished, this changes the de facto understanding of a common policy of punishment around that rule. Similarly, how does my behaviour change if the service culture emphasizes the importance of hierarchy and I see that behaviour exemplified in my colleagues’ actions?

As a complement to setting-specific modules, a system of coordinated common modules would facilitate inter-survey comparison. The commonalities of the service documented here would imply that there is scope for us to ask some of the same questions to all civil servants, and as argued above the lack of existing data would encourage such comparisons. Common modules would have significantly reduced the need for discussion in this paper over comparability. There is work to be done on what should be in these common modules, and how to ask them, and experimentation should be embeded in new surveys that allow us to better understand how to survey civil servants. Beyond common modules, a common approach to collecting data on productivity across services would be of immense benefit to our understanding of the comparative quality of government. I have argued that this should not simply be self-reported within the survey. Given the process nature of much of civil service work, the likelihood is that this productivity data would need to take the form of performance audits, such as those undertaken in Ghana in Rasul et al (2017). To facilitate the analysis of these productivity measures, a common framework for collecting data on physical and human capital across settings would allow for commonalities in the control variables used for productivity decomposition. These measures could also be used as a common benchmark for the basics of what a civil service requires to function - electricity most of the time, computers for key staff, and internet connectivity at least some of the time each week, as well as the ability to use computers and an understanding of what the internet offers for supporting service delivery. Such measures could be as basic as whether a unit has a basic filing system.

Beyond any single survey, panel data would allow us to better understand the dynamics of the service. For example, following the cadre of officials who move most frequently across the service would provide us with insights on the productivity impacts of their migrations. This will require long-term relationships with governments eager to understand such dynamics in a representative and rigorous way. Similarly, linking surveys of public administration officials with those of frontline public service staff (such as the World Bank’s Service Delivery Indicators), and even with citizen or public service user surveys would provide an integrated framework in which to understand the ‘flow’ of governance through the individuals who organize, deliver, and consume it.

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