The Administration Survey (Ministry and Directorate) 2016

In 2016, an electronic questionnaire was sent out to case officers and managers with at least one year's service in the ministry and directorate and other central administration on features of working methods, personnel and decision processes. The study is a continuation of similar surveys in 1976, 1986, 1996 and 2006. Principal investigators are Professor Per Lægreid, University of Bergen and Rokkan Centre, Professors Tom Christensen and Morten Egeberg, University of Oslo, and Professor Jarle Trondal, University of Agder. All the researchers have been central as project staff and principal investigators in the previous central administration surveys.

About the Central Administration Surveys 2016
The survey represents a follow-up of four previous surveys that cover the entire Norwegian central administration. The survey started with "Maktutredningens departementsstudie i 1976" with Professor Johan P. Olsen as principal investigator. Ten years later, a closely related survey was conducted under the auspices of the Research Council's focus area "management, organization and management system" (LOS). In 1996 and 2006, the third and fourth equivalent survey was carried out, then under the auspices of ARENA, the University of Oslo, in collaboration with the Department of Political Science, the University of Oslo and the University of Bergen. Since the last survey, a new decade has passed and one wanted to follow up many of the same topics again. The survey in 2016 was carried out and financed by the University of Oslo in collaboration with the University of Agder and the University of Bergen. The technical execution was handled by NSD - the Norwegian Center for Research Data, which also safeguards privacy concerns in the data collection. The result of the surveys is that one gets - in an international context - unique insight into development features with regard to the administration's working methods, staff composition and value alignment over a 40-year period. One goal is that the survey will contribute significantly to the administration's self-understanding, society's understanding of it, and thus to the work of maintaining and creating good governance.

In addition to questions about time use, work routines and decision-making processes, the questionnaire also contains some questions that have been specifically prepared for the government-appointed law committee that will go through the Public Administration Act, led by Professor Inge Lorange Backer, appointed by Royal Decree 23.11 2015.