The narrowly defined composite indexes described here represent the best way of summarising discrete, qualitative information. “Composite indexes are much easier to interpret than trying to find a common trend in many separate indicators” (Nardo et al., 2005[1]). However, their development and use can be controversial. These indexes are easily and often misinterpreted by users due to a lack of transparency about how they are generated, which makes it difficult to truly unpack what they are actually measuring.

The OECD Infrastructure Governance Indicators (IGIs) are intended to support and monitor the implementation of the OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Infrastructure(hereafter “the Recommendation”), adopted by the OECD Council on 17 July 2020 (OECD, 2020[1]). The Recommendation is based on 10 pillars that relate to how governments plan, prioritise, fund, budget, deliver, operate and monitor infrastructure assets. It presents a whole-of-government approach, covering the entire life cycle of infrastructure projects and placing special emphasis on regional, gender, resilience, environmental perspectives and the gender perspective. The overarching nature of the Recommendation’s pillars allows for exhaustive analysis of the multiple governance dimensions that are at play in infrastructure planning, decision making and delivery. They therefore provide a robust conceptual framework for the development of the IGIs. The pillars represent both conceptual categories and functional areas of work. As such, the pillars are not standalone entities and interact with one another to support a comprehensive overview of infrastructure governance.

The following table provides detailed information on how the aggregates of taxes, net social contributions, sales, grants and other revenues presented in Chapter 10 “Public revenues and production costs” were constructed from the OECD National Accounts data.

Developed by the OECD, the Classification of the Functions of Government (COFOG) classifies government expenditure data from the System of National Accounts by the purpose for which the funds are used. As illustrates, first-level COFOG splits expenditure data into ten “functional” groups or sub-sectors of expenditures (such as economic affairs, education and social protection), and second-level COFOG further splits each first-level group into up to nine sub-groups. First-level COFOG data are available for 34 out of the 38 OECD countries (according to time series availability), while second-level COFOG data are usually available for OECD European countries plus Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Israel and Japan. First-level COFOG expenditures data are not available for Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and Türkiye. Until recently, second level COFOG data were available in some national statistical offices, but were not collected by international organisations. Moreover, the second-level COFOG data were not always fully comparable among countries because the SNA/UN guide and the International Monetary Fund Manual on Government Finance Statistics did not provide much practical information on the application of COFOG concepts. However, in 2005, Eurostat established a task force on guidance on the application of COFOG to national account expenditure data and to discuss the collection of second-level COFOG data for European countries. Second-level COFOG data are not available for several OECD non-European countries, except Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Israel and Japan. In addition, these data are available only for selected COFOG divisions in some countries. Efforts are underway to reach an agreement with these countries about the submission of these data to the OECD.

The following classification has been used in OECD surveys on the Composition of the workforce in central/federal governments since the 2016 Survey on Strategic Human Resource Management. It has also been used for the OECD standard survey module on Employee Engagement in civil services since 2020. Such classification defines the four main hierarchical levels on occupations. These definitions are broadly based on the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) maintained by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and full definitions are available via the following link: www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/stat/isco/isco08/index.htm. The classification and the definition of the occupations are an adaptation of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08) developed by the ILO. The reason for the adaptation is that not all countries follow the ISCO model to classify their occupations in government, as the occupations included at the national level may differ due to specific legal and administrative frameworks.

The Government at a Glance Steering Group is an informal group of the OECD Public Governance Committee. Participation is open to all member countries. The Steering Group, which was set up for the first edition of Government at a Glance (published in 2009), meets regularly to advise on the publication and more generally on public governance statistics and data.