The Senior Civil Service: A comparison of personnel development for top managers in fourteen OECD member countries

This research was carried out under the authority of The Office for the Senior Public Service in the Netherlands

The survey on which this work is based was commissioned by the ABD (Bureau voor de Algemene Bestuursdienst). ABD is the office charged with the development of the senior public servants of the Netherlands, and was established in 1995, under the Director General, Dr. Benita Plesch. In order to provide a comparative base for its work, the Office decided in 1996 to commission from the consultancy company Berenschot Management Consulting a survey of current policy, practice, development and underlying principles in relation to the senior civil service in selected member countries of OECD. This paper represents the main report from the survey.

In publishing this work, EIPA is departing somewhat from its usual pattern of publications, in a number of respects. In this case, EIPA was not the main author, but a contributor to the main task which was undertaken by Berenschot. The coverage of the work is also different from our usual focus on the administrations of the Member States of the European Union (although it does include 10 of the current 15 Member States). Nevertheless, we took the view that this survey was very important, in providing a detailed and up-to-date picture of the latest developments in some of the leading administrations world-wide. Some of the most radical and influential developments of senior public administration are taking place in the non-EU countries which are included here, and their approaches and experiences are of great interest to the Member States.

When the survey was completed, and ABD had circulated the results within the Dutch administration, the Director General of ABD, Dr. Plesch, kindly offered the results to EIPA for publication and distribution to a wider audience. In view of the importance of the work, as noted above, we had no hesitation in accepting the offer. We would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Plesch and her colleagues in ABD, and to our colleagues in Berenschot, for the opportunity to make these results available to an international audience.