Analysis Of 35000 Senior Civil Servants

The civil service received a half month year-end bonus this year amid the economic downturn, but have you wondered who they are? Where do they work?

Disclaimer

The analysis was conducted using publicly available data from the Singapore Government Directory (SGDI). The data was pieced together from over 4000 webpages. I have cleaned the data to a reasonable degree before performing the analysis. There is no guarantee of the accuracy of the data.

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Number of Senior Civil Servants Listed
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Min. Education      6020    Organs of State     1421
Min. Health         3727    PM Office           1400
Min. Transport      3549    MSF                 1355
Min. Trade Ind.     3385    Min. Finance        1330
MND                 3278    MEWR                1059
Min. Home Affairs   1911    Min. Law            1021
MCCY                1614    MFA                 827
MCI                 1551    MINDEF              242
Min. Manpower       1440

Organs of State include the AGO, AGC as well as the courts. The numbers for the ministries include stat boards under it as well. E.g. numbers for Min. Transport include LTA. The numbers for MFA and MINDEF may be low as the public usually do not contact these 2 ministries hence there might be no need to list these officers.

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Job Roles (by keyword)
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Manager     9465            Officer     2978
Director    8818            Head        2228
Senior      7388            Principal   1437
Assistant   6025            Engineer    1150
Executive   3813            Chief       999
Deputy      3665            Specialist  704

The numbers for Deputy might be lower as there is no Deputy Manager position, only Deputy Director. However the keywords Senior and Assistant apply to both managers and directors. Principal likely include both school principals as well as principal engineers.

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Top 20 most common Chinese name radicals
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Tan         3014            Bin         716
Lim         2084            Goh         697
Lee         1771            Wee         686
Ng          1359            Chan        654
Wong        902             Chua        644
Hui         889             Koh         643
Ling        822             Teo         618
Wei         803             Chee        582
Ong         732             Ho          556
Ling        727             Hong        548

Some of the radicals such as Ho and Wee might be a surname or part of the name itself. Hence I decided to group them together as radicals. Some radicals such as Lee and Li might be the same Chinese character, however they are categorized separately.

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Top 10 most common Muslim related names
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Bin         716             Muhammad        156
Binte       499             Siti            115
Bte         364             Ahmad           98
Mohamed     263             Mohamad         95
Mohd        253             Rahman          64

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Top 10 most common English names
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Grace       141             Daniel          121
David       141             Cheryl          114
Michelle    132             Serene          107
Sharon      131             Michael         107
Karen       129             Jason           104

It is interesting to note the most common spelling of Mohd used. Bin could be both a Chinese radical or a Malay name. It seems like Chinese women tend to rise higher in the civil service. Alternatively, it could be that Chinese men tend to have less common names, or that they tend to work for the private sector. There were also 133 Singh and 61 Kaur. Indian names did not feature probably because they are much more unique.

Honorable mention. 68 Benjamin listed.

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Top 10 most common Double word matches
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Bin Abdul       62      Lim Siew            42
Tan Hui         56      Bin Mohd            40
Tan Li          46      Wei Ling            39
Binte Mohamed   45      Bin Mohamed         38
Hui Min         42      Tan Siew            34

Abdul Rahman    29 (Follow up of Bin Abdul)
Li Ling         26 (Follow up of Tan Li)
Abdul Aziz      19 (Follow up of Bin Abdul)

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Full name matches
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Michelle Tan    9       Julie Ng            8
Serene Tan      9       Elaine Teo          7
Sharon Tan      9       Tan Hui Ling        7
Elaine Tan      8       Grace Ng            7
Jasmine Neo     8       Jasmine Lim         7

The Tans feature prominently here. It is the most common surname but I didn't expect such a skewed result. Maybe the Tans tend to lack creativity. There are a few rare exact chinese name matches as well, 7 Tan Hui Ling working for different ministries.

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All time most popular combo
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- Michelle Tan Hui Min
- Serene Tan Li Ling
- Mohamed Rahman Bin Abdul Aziz