There are three broad areas of public administration that require valuation for public goods. One of these areas is concerned with value for cost benefit analysis. The concept here is quantitative, in money terms, and the purpose is to aid decision making. Planners and economists either calculate, or estimate total costs and total benefits of programs or projects as an aid to decision making. The second broad area involves justifying, or allocating public resources. Benefits bestowed by intangibles such as the arts, or questions that affect the environment are difficult to quantify as value may involve concepts the beneficiaries find difficult to identify or describe. The concept of value involves total costs, but also may involve perceptions of the community about value. Valuation costs may be calculated from the aggregate demand, but estimating demand can be difficult. The third broad area involves estimating demand for government services such as those provided by the Bureau of Statistics, and the Department of Administrative Services, as well as many others, who are being required to charge fees for services previously provided without direct charge. This development is part of the trend called corporatisation now occurring in many countries, including Australia. Economists and planners have a range of approaches available to assist them in the estimation of value, whether it be for the purpose of comparing costs with benefits, or for estimating the demand for tangible or intangible items like the arts or statistics. Surveys have been used for many years to assist a wide range of decisions by private enterprise. The use of surveys by government in Australia has been limited, but is increasing. US and European governments have used surveys to value both more and less tangible public goods since 1970. Surveys have also proved useful to assist many other decisions, including policy making, developing the means for implementing policies, monitoring and adjusting programs, and evaluation. This paper is primarily concerned with surveys. A particular type of survey, known as contingent valuation (CV), has been developed to assist the estimation of value for intangible public goods. Also discussed are other applications of surveys for government decision making, and other ways of imputing or estimating values, largely developed by economists and planners to assist cost benefit analysis. Three examples of surveys used to estimate values are discussed. These include a survey of Sydney households to help estimate the value of clean water; an Australia wide survey to help estimate the value of the arts; and a survey of Australians to help estimate the value of Coronation Hill without mining development. While the paper suggests that surveys have potential to assist a range of government decisions, examples also demonstrate the care required to obtain results that are reasonably precise and reliable.