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Chapter 1. Introduction

This report presents the results of a project to develop model ‘key performance indicators’ for New South Wales Courts. The project was a joint undertaking between the New South Wales Attorney General’s Department and the Justice Research Centre. Its aim was to improve the management information used to help the Courts do their work effectively.

Despite an interest in management statistics which can be traced back to the earliest introduction of ‘caseflow management’ reforms (largely imported from the United States),¹ and the more recent extension of modern public sector management requirements of ‘accountability’ to their specialised sphere,² Australian Courts have few, really good models of management information systems available to them. There is, in fact, a familiar litany of complaints about the deficiencies of court statistics. In a very recent assessment, the Audit Office of New South Wales³ described ‘the management information systems currently supporting managers in the courts system [as] relatively inflexible, limited in content and not well integrated.’

A complete management information system has to be designed, of course, to address a hierarchy of different needs. The ‘Model KPIs’ were designed with a narrower but nevetheless ambitious (and elusive) purpose in mind. This was to produce, using the fewest statistics possible, the simplest, clearest, most comprehensive picture possible of how well the Courts were performing, in terms relevant to the operational needs of their managers but also addressed to the interests of a wider public. Thus conceived, it is hoped that the Model KPIs can form something like the ‘keystone’ of a fully adequate management information system for Courts.

Basic Principles

The design of the Model KPIs has been influenced by four basic axioms (or, possibly, prejudices of the authors) about Court performance measurement, which should be expanded upon briefly before turning to the details of the Model.

Performance has to be measured against goals fixed by the Courts

The first among these is that, of course, performance indicators should relate to the ‘performance goals’ of a Court.

A few important observations should be made in relation to this point. Not all Courts presently have explicitly stated aims. However, it is clear that all Courts are concerned, broadly speaking, to serve the public by resolving disputes according to law, when required, through processes which are fair, expeditious and cost-effective.⁴ The Model KPIs focus on timeliness and cost-effectiveness — or what might be described collectively as the ‘case management’ or ‘processing’ goals of the Court system.

This focus is not intended to imply that wider goals of fair process or just outcomes are somehow unimportant. To the contrary, they are givens and, if management jargon can be used without trivialising the point, ‘performance’ in relation to these goals is assured by entrenched structural features of our court system and its procedural regimens. Everyone will immediately see the sense in trying to reduce timeliness and cost to simple performance goals and measures; it is a nonsense to try to do the same with the goals of fair process and just outcomes.

The Courts should set goals for themselves, in measurable terms

Courts should, in fact, adopt precise (that is, measurable) ‘performance standards’ in relation to the general goals of ‘timeliness’ and ‘cost-effectiveness’.

This has a significant benefit for the Courts. Performance standards or benchmarks overcome the frustration and sensitivity of Courts used to dealing with less sophisticated measures of performance. The most familiar example is perhaps the use of ‘time taken’ as a measure of ‘delay’ — this completely fails to take account of the fact that the process must take time and, even, in some cases may need to take a lot of time. A time standard provides a rational, defensible basis for distinguishing between time necessarily taken by the process, and unreasonable delay. Similar observations can be made about cost-effectiveness.

Performance measurement should support management activity

Key performance indicators should encourage Courts to manage to meet their performance goals.

This means, among other things, that performance indicators should, as much as possible, be directed to the Court’s present and future, rather than its past. They should be related to simple operational targets or benchmarks of satisfactory progress. They should also require no, or minimal, interpretation or synthesis; if things are not going well, ideally they will indicate, in general terms, what sort of corrective action is required.

‘Key’ means comprehensive but simple and few

Key performance indicators should be comprehensive but also simple and as few in number as possible.

This essentially repeats the central idea introduced above but it bears repeating. It would only be a little unkind to observe that Australian Court statistics seem to have followed the climatic cycle of drought followed by flood. After years of keeping only the most rudimentary data on ‘ins’ and ‘outs’, and ‘pending’ case numbers, some Courts now produce whole books of almost bewildering tables and charts. When presented in well-designed reports, this detail has an important place in the management of the day-to-day operations of Courts. However, the aim of a key performance report should be to provide the maximum amount of useful information with a minimum amount of data, in an easily absorbed form. The ultimate message should be simple: ‘All is well’ or ‘All is not well.’

A discussion paper presenting an earlier draft of the Model KPIs was circulated in March 1999 to the chief judicial and administrative officers of each of the New South Wales Courts, for their advice. Several very valuable comments were received, and the model has been revised in light of them. In this report we have endeavoured to reflect fully all of the comments received, and to indicate how we have responded to them.