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Performance Measurement in Government Service Provision: The Case of Police Services in New South Wales

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Abstract

The NSW Government is implementing a financial framework which is designed to encourage government service providers to become more efficient and effective. NSW Treasury is using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure the efficiency of major government service providers, such as police, courts and hospitals. This paper outlines the progress in implementing the new financial framework and illustrates the way NSW Treasury will use DEA to help improve the efficiency of government service providers by describing an analysis of the NSW Police Service. The results suggest that NSW police patrols (local police districts) could, on average, reduce input usage by 13.5 percent through better management, and by 6 percent if the patrols could be restructured to achieve the optimal scale. Results also indicate that differences in operating environments, such as location and socioeconomic factors, do not have a significant influence upon the efficiency of police patrols.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NSW Treasury, Governor Macquarie Tower, 1 Farrer Place, Sydney, 2000, Australia

    Roger Carrington, Nara Puthucheary & Deirdre Rose

  2. Union College, Schenectady, New York, 12038, USA

    Suthathip Yaisawarng

Authors
  1. Roger Carrington
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  2. Nara Puthucheary
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  3. Deirdre Rose
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  4. Suthathip Yaisawarng
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Carrington, R., Puthucheary, N., Rose, D. et al. Performance Measurement in Government Service Provision: The Case of Police Services in New South Wales. Journal of Productivity Analysis 8, 415–430 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007788026595

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007788026595

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