The Prime Minister’s Office issued its own report card.
By TOVAH LAZAROFFUpdated: APRIL 6, 2017 06:43Largest French aliya flight of the summer lands in Israel, July 20, 2016(photo credit: TAMARA ZIEVE)
The Prime Minister’s Office issued its own report card for publication on Thursday to help the public understand whether the government has a passing grade when it comes to quality of life and good governance.It is part of Israel’s push to improve its standing among the 35 countries that are members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.“In order to achieve this goal we must provide annual plans and set measurable policy objectives,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the report’s introduction.“We must also examine the extent to which we meet these goals,” he added.It is the first of what will become a yearly, wide-ranging progress report on Israeli life posted on the Internet.In the initial report, the data go back only one year, thereby limiting qualitative analysis, but as time goes on, yearly data assessment will allow citizens to better understand whether areas such as housing, health and education are improving or declining.For example, housing starts in Israel grew from 50,000 in 2015 to 54,000 in 2016, but fell short of the expected 10,000-unit increase.Immigration dropped from 31,300 in 2015, to 26,729 in 2016, whereas Israel had expected that the numbers would increase slightly to 32,000.Similarly, it had expected the number of Israelis returning home after living abroad to grow from 6,752 in 2015 to 8,000 the next year. Instead the numbers dropped to 6,284.Israel had hoped that the number of illegal African migrants who agreed to voluntarily leave would grow from 3,350 in 2015 to 5,000 in 2016. Instead the number dropped slightly to 3,246.