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I've recently had quite a few discussions about the civil service in the UK and France --- and how their composition and cultures differ. So I've been looking at the best data that I think exists, LinkedIn. And it's fascinating.
The university supplying the second largest number of French Treasury civil servants is (once you de-duplicate it) the "École nationale de la statistique et de l'administration économique" (ENSAE). Well ahead of ENA.
You can't go very deep into LinkedIn data without a lot of effort and a constant feeling that you're breaking the law. So I can't share too much more. But I know that the LinkedIn team are working on making this data even more useful to more people.
A neat feature is that I can see my own bias (through number of shared connections, distance of connections, etc...) into each organisation --- and that explains some of my different experience of both.
The LinkedIn dataset is one of the most valuable datasets in economics and it would be amazing if Microsoft can find ways to make more money from it, while making it more available to more researchers, and ideally more open to everyone in some way. But that's hard.
And of course there are lots of complexities. The structure of government are quite different, the people who'll use LinkedIn is different, what they use it for is different, national cultures about sharing are different. But compared to talking to people, it's so good.
What do I learn from having an [Oxford PPE graduate/SciencesPo-ENA graudate] tell me that the [UK/French] civil service is the best in the world and excellent at including the best talent? Nothing. I learn nothing.
If I talked with French and British people in and around the civil service about data published by both governments around Covid-19,...
* Many Brits would believe that the UK data was better.
* Many French would refuse to compare and just say the French data wasn't good enough.
* Many Brits would believe that the UK data was better.
* Many French would refuse to compare and just say the French data wasn't good enough.
Data at least lets you challenge that.
What shall we call this new elite university for the defence of France? Shall we dress it up a bit like The Special Military School at St. Cyr? Maybe call it the Defence of The Republic Uni? Campus of Protecting Liberties?
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Non. Just call it what it is. "ÉCOLE DE GUERRE!"
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Non. Just call it what it is. "ÉCOLE DE GUERRE!"
And what do you mostly study at War School?
