Summary

The Effectiveness of the Public Services in Israel: An International Comparison

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The tragedy of October 7, and the lack of a public sector response over the course of the ongoing crisis, shed light on the grim situation. This review presents figures and trends relating to the performance of the public sector and its ability to provide services and solutions in real time.

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Abstract

Many of the social services required by the public, such as healthcare, education, welfare, and municipal services, are provided mainly or exclusively by the public sector. This is the situation in routine times, and in times of crisis, there is even more dependence on these agencies. The motivation for this review stems from two public opinion surveys conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute, in August 2023 (before the war) and December 2023 (during the war). The results indicate a consistent decline in Israeli citizens’ satisfaction with the public services provided by the government.

In this review, we sought to examine the performance of the public sector, the quality of the services provided, and citizens’ satisfaction with their access to social services in Israel as compared to the other countries of the OECD. The findings indicate that Israeli agencies are ineffectual, the quality of the social services provided has declined, and there are poor outcomes in various domains—such as education, welfare, and even accessibility and use of data. Ultimately, the inferior services are translated into Israelis’ lower level of satisfaction with their access to services, as well as lower levels of wellbeing compared to Israel's OECD counterparts.

The tragedy of October 7, and the lack of a public sector response over the course of the ongoing crisis, shed light on the grim situation. This review presents figures and trends relating to the performance of the public sector and its ability to provide services and solutions in real time.

The following are the key findings of the study:

  • Almost half of the population (45%) believe that the quality of the public services in Israel is worse today than under previous governments (as of December 2023). In August 2023, only 38% of the respondents thought that the services were worse or very much worse than previously.
  • While Israel receives close to the average score for the effective implementation of government policy compared to the OECD, it stands out for its sub-par coordination across institutional lines (it falls into the group of countries with the lowest score in this regard, with almost 80% of the OECD countries ranked above it).
  • In the context of informal coordination, Israel also received the lowest score among all OECD countries, along with Turkey and Slovakia. The informal coordination indicator postulates that there is a “healthy” level of informal interactions that optimizes government operations, whereas political and sectoral interference and excessive reliance on personal acquaintances undermines overall coordination and integration of services. With regard to decision-making in the OECD countries, 92% have a better balance between the formal and nonformal mechanisms.
  • A number of case-studies that we examined—in the areas of welfare, education, and data use—revealed inferior outcomes of public services and significantly below-average scores as compared to the OECD countries, corresponding to the poor coordination and less effective implementation in Israel.
  • An OECD Risks that Matter survey found that Israelis’ confidence that they will receive public services when they need them is particularly low. In response to a statement indicating whether respondents agree or disagree that they can easily receive public benefits if they needed them, the percentage of Israelis who disagreed was the highest among all the OECD countries: 69%. Across the entire OECD, the average figure was 46%. In other words, a large majority of Israelis do not count on accessing public support when they need it.
  • Our study found that there is a positive correlation between social spending and the percentage of a country’s citizens who believe they will be able exercise their rights to public benefits if they need them. Israel is located below this trend line, so even given the low level of real per capita social spending in Israel, Israelis think the odds they can enjoy public support is significantly lower than might be expected compared to other countries with similar spending levels.