Post-Conference Review
How to Educate on the Theory & Mechanics of Performance Measures
by Mary T. Sammon

This session was based upon a recent COSCA white paper that explored the reasons why courts fail to embrace performance measurement. The challenge for the judicial educator is how to plan, design and deliver a curriculum that moves courts toward adopting performance measurement.

The approach used in this education session was to explore how to reach the various audiences in a court setting from the policy makers (judges) and non-judicial leadership (court administrators/managers) to the front line, where all the heavy lifting takes place. For performance measurement to be embraced in the courts, all the players need to understand what it is and how to use it to demonstrate transparency and accountability to both court users and the court’s funders. The session explored ideas that might speak to the various levels of the court:

What Speaks to the Judiciary?
• Preservation of the independence of the judiciary
• Constitutional responsibility for administration of justice
• Interdependencies with other two branches of government
• Capable stewardship of public trust and confidence
• Court-wide perspective of court operations
• Defining mission and vision of the court
• Achievement of court outcomes

What Speaks to Court Management?
• Accountability to other two branches of government
• Transparency in use of resources and conduct of business, internal and external to court
• Ability to assess efficacy of resource allocation
• Ability to confirm perceptions with data
• Responding to customer expectations
• Justifying budgetary requests
• Court as a service institution

What Speaks to the Front Line?
• Whose idea was this anyway?
• Fostering creativity among staff
• Bring part of something bigger than themselves
• Having their institutional knowledge valued in finding solutions to systems and process problems
• Having a voice (not a vote) in how organizational change takes place
• Sharing responsibility for success
• Sharing credit for success

The session explored ways to determine the criteria for a good set of performance indicators by first identifying what things matter to the court and marrying those concepts to what the court has the ability to measure in a sustainable manner that is both feasible and meaningful. The session explored some lessons learned from the field, the benefits of transparency, reasons why the courts should assess performance and some common elements to achieving successful performance measurement, including
• Effective communication, internal and external to the court
• Focusing on discreet measures
• Developing best practices and standards
• Transparency: publishing results to web site
• Executive/legislative branches view court as well-managed
• Performance measurement becomes institutionalized as the way courts do business

Designing effective education sessions on performance measurement for the various levels of the court has the potential to initiate real organizational change in the courts.

Copyright 1999-2012, National Association of State Judicial Educators
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