• Guidance to governance indicators

Guidance to governance indicators

The increasing demand for reliable measures of governance has resulted in a tremendous growth in indicator sources, which are used to measure the performance of governments, the quality of public institutions, as well as people’s perceptions of various aspects of governance. This users’ guide brings together both ‘where to find’ and ‘how to use’ material on these sources.

The focus of this guide is on indicators, rather than statistics. A governance indicator is a measure that points out something about the state of governance in a country. Governance indicators are usually narrowed down to measure more specific areas of governance such as electoral systems, corruption, human rights, public service delivery, civil society, and gender equality.

The guide comprises two parts. The first part provides generic guidance for users of indicators, illustrated with specific examples from the governance arena, and takes the reader through the following sections:

• What is the problem?
• How can we get data?
• What data can we get?
• How can we use the data?
  

The second part of the publication is a source guide, which takes the reader through some specifics about the currently available data sources, including a snapshot of their methodology, some example data, their contact information and the important assumptions underlying the particular source.

The first part of the guide takes the reader from Issue to Information, whereas the second part does the reverse: starting with the information available and enabling the reader to interpret that in order to focus on the key issue.

A unique feature of this guide is that it digs deeper into the sources and highlights the key facts that readers need to know before using any index. These include the methodology of the indicator, the assumptions which underpin it, and what they imply for the use of the source.

This guide is a second edition of the original publication and includes several new indicator sources and an updating of existing sources.

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