Most of the data in Government at a Glance Southeast Asia 2019 were collected from government officials by the OECD via specifically defined surveys (Budgeting Practices and Procedures, Digital Government, Open Government and Open Government Data, and Strategic Human Resources). As such, they represent either official government statistics or the country’s own assessments of current practices and procedures. To the extent possible, OECD data collection instruments use standardised definitions and common units of measure. However, biases can occur in that countries may interpret and answer questions differently and/or may not answer the questions completely objectively. In general, the direction of the bias is known but not necessarily its extent. To try and minimise these biases, the OECD cleaned and verified the collected data by following up with countries when there were potential inconsistencies and outliers. This has been mainly achieved thanks to the OECD’s knowledge through previous work in the region and local presence in the countries under study. In addition, respondents have been asked to provide additional evidence to validate their answers which, in turn, have been verified with other external and additional sources whenever available. Data collection began in 2017 and in six countries – Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand (for the Budgeting Practices and Procedures survey data collection started in 2015 and was updated in 2018). Data collection began in 2018 in the remaining four countries – Brunei Darussalam, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar and Viet Nam. All data were finalised after a thorough data cleaning process for all countries in 2018.
Data were also drawn from other international organisations such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The public finance and economics data for SEA countries were based on the IMF World Economic Outlook (IMF WEO) and the IMF Government Financial Statistics (IMF GFS) databases. Data from the IMF WEO were extracted in early May 2018 corresponding to the April update. Data from the IMF GFS database were extracted on May 30th 2018. Moreover, data for tax revenues, which are also part of the public finance data, were extracted from the OECD Revenue Statistics in Asian Countries database on May 30th 2018. Finally, for the OECD countries and the average, the data were based on the System of National Accounts (SNA) and were extracted from the Government at a Glance online database representing the last available update: 28 June 2018 (financial government accounts: 3 July 2018). In many cases, data on public finances are presented for 2007, 2009, 2016 and if available, 2017.
The public employment data for SEA countries was extracted from the ILO dataset LABORSTA on 13 July 2018.
Despite the significant accomplishments of international organisations in harmonising data among the various statistical systems, several differences that impact some of the indicators analysed. Therefore notes are included within the methodological sections whenever specific methodological considerations need to be taken into account.
Finally, indicators included in the Serving Citizens chapter are also resulting from different sources, which are the worldwide public opinion polls of Gallup World Pool database for 2007 and 2017, the Word Justice Project database for 2017, the OECD 2015 PISA database for 2015, and the World Health Organisation 2018 - Global Health Estimates 2016 dataset for 2010 and 2016. Data for this chapter were extracted from the correspondent databases on 24 August 2018.