The importance of efficiency analysis for improving public services: Editorial to the special issue on "Efficiency and productivity analysis of public services in practice"

Public services around the world face growing demands, limited budgets, and changing populations. As a result, analyzing efficiency is more important than ever. Techniques like data envelopment analysis, stochastic frontier analysis, and machine learning techniques offer valuable tools for improving how public services are managed. This special issue highlights current research on measuring efficiency in education, healthcare, finance, real estate, and more. It is divided into four main areas: new ways to measure efficiency, factors affecting how well educational institutions perform, improvements in public services such as health and social care, and insights into how businesses use efficiency measures. The findings show how policy settings, governance, and data quality all affect how we measure and improve efficiency. Moreover, the contributions show how combining traditional methods with innovative techniques can provide a better analysis of complex systems and long-term outcomes. Building on the insights from the papers in the special issue, we propose a future research agenda that encourages collaboration between experts in different fields, uses new data tools, and supports evidence-based public service delivery. By connecting theory to practical use, this special issue aims to improve how public services operate, making them more efficient, fair, and based on real data to help decision-makers.