Improving the analysis of the judiciary performance - the use of data mining techniques to assess the timeliness of civil trials

• Date: 14 November 2023
• Pages: 59-76
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-02-2023-0058
• Published date: 14 November 2023
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management
• Author: Barbara Pernici,Carlo Alberto Bono,Ludovica Piro,Mattia Del Treste,Giancarlo Vecchi

Improving the analysis of the

judiciary performance - the use of

data mining techniques to assess

the timeliness of civil trials

Barbara Pernici, Carlo Alberto Bono, Ludovica Piro and

Mattia Del Treste

Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano,

Milan, Italy, and

Giancarlo Vecchi

Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering,

Policy Analysis Team, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to show how data mining techniques can improve the performance

management of the judiciary, helping judges in steering position with specific and timely measures. It explores

different approaches to analyse the length of trials, based on the case of an Italian judicial office.

Design/methodology/approach –The paper presents a temporal analysis to compare the timeliness of

trials, using data and process mining approaches with the support of a specific software to represent

graphically the results. Data were gathered directly from the office data base, improving precision and the

opportunity to monitor specific phases of the trials.

Findings –The results highlight the progress that can be reached using data mining approaches to develop

performance analyses helping courts to correct inefficiencies and to manage the personnel distribution,

overcoming the critical comments arisen against traditional KPI (Raine, 2000). The work proposes a

methodology to analyse cases deriving from different juridical matters useful to set up a performance

monitoring system that could be diffused to different courts.

Research limitations/implications –The limitations of the research regard the analysis of a selected,

limited number of cases in terms of judicial matters.

Practical implications –Data mining techniques can improve the performance management processes in

providing more accurate feedback to the judicial offices leaders and increasing the organisational learning.

Socialimplications –The performance of thejudiciary is one of the relevant issues that emerged in the recent

decade in the field of public sector reforms. Several reasons explain this interest, which has gone beyond the

specific legal disciplines to involve public policy, management, economics and ICT studies.

Originality/value –Considering the literature on the judiciary (Visser et al., 2019; Di Martino et al., 2021;

Troisi and Alfano, 2023) the contribution differs as both the methodological approach and the predictive

analysis considers the intrinsic differences that define cases belonging to different juridical matters performing

a cross-sectional analysis, with a specific focus of process variants.

Keywords Judiciaryperformance,Data and process mining,Judicial officesmanagement, Publicsector reforms

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

The performance of the judiciary is a relevant issue emerged in the recent decade in the field

of public sector reforms. Several reasons justify this interest, which has gone beyond the

specific legal disciplines to involve public policy, public management, economics and ICT

studies (Chohan, 2021).

Proposals from

an Italian

case study

59

This research was supported by the Italian Ministry of Justice PON under grant [code CUP

D19J22000240006] “Next Generation UPP: Nuovi schemi collaborativi tra Universit

a e uffici giudiziari.

Per il miglioramento dell’efficienza e delle Prestazioni della giustizia nell’Italia del nord-ovest”.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0951-3558.htm

Received 19 March 2023

Revised 7 August 2023

Accepted 28 September 2023

International Journal of Public

Sector Management

Vol. 37 No. 1, 2024

pp. 59-76

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0951-3558

DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-02-2023-0058

The judiciary represents one of the pillars of democratic regimes: on one hand, its good

functioning influences both the respect of human and civil rights and impacts on the

economic national and territorial development (Knack and Keefer, 1995;Marciano et al., 2018).

Despite this relevance, the quality and efficiency of the judicial organisations is not so

frequently analysed by public management studies.

The introduction of management practices into courts and the performance improvement

of the judicial organisations have reached the institutional and academic agenda in Europe

following (with a certain delay) models and reforms that characterised the public sector

during the final decades of the last century (e.g. the New Public Management) and, more

recently, triggered by the ICT development (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2017). The improvement of

managerial competences of the courts’judges with steering and coordination responsibilities

(in Italy, the president of the Court and the presidents of the sections), the introduction of

performance monitoring processes and quality indicators, the digitisation of the cases, and

the development of more transparent relations with professional and general users, are some

of the topics of this debate, based on the paradigm of “justice as a public service”(Vecchi,

2018;Vigour, 2018;Visser et al., 2019). In any case, it is a challenging itinerary, because of the

need to combine the managerial practices with the democratic principles (the autonomy and

independence of the judiciary) and the goals of the judicial system (Garapon et Lass

egue,

2018;Troisi and Alfano, 2023).

The issue occupies a top level in the Italianpublic sector reforms agenda. In fact, the Italian

judiciary presents, in comparison with the other EU Member States, one of the worse

positions considering the length of the civil and commercial cases. Despite some reform

programmes during the last decade, Italy remains in the bottom positions of the European

ranking considering the “disposition time”indicator (the measure of the time needed to decide

all the backlog of pending case, maintaining the current organisational productivity level).

Based on 2020 data for the civil and commercial cases, the disposition time of the three levels

of judgement was: 674 days in the courts of first instance (ordinary courts), 1,026 in the courts

of appeal (second instance level), and 1,156 in the Court of Cassation (third/higher level).

Conversely, the median amongst the member countries of the Council of Europe, considering

the three levels, is: 237 days, first instance; 177 days, second instance and 172 days third

instance (Cepej, 2022).

The main determinants of this poor performance, beyond the good results of some courts,

are considered the scarce organisational competences of the judges holding managerial

positions [1] (traditionally Italian judges do not have an organisational background), the

weak level of offices digitisation, the high level of litigiousness of the Italian society (Palumbo

et al., 2013), the reduction of the administrative personnel during the 2008–2020 (Cepej, 2022),

the so-called “austerity period”in Europe (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2017).

Italy is one of the main beneficiaries of the Next Generation EU Program, and its National

Recovery and Resilience Plan 2021–26 (NRRP) includes objectives concerning the judiciary

improvement. The plan defines specific targets to reduce the length of civil and criminal

cases, improve the efficiency of the offices and reduce the backlog of pending cases. Amongst

the organisational measures envisaged to reach these targets (digitisation, simplification of

some judicial rites, recruitment of new judges and staff employees), the plan fosters the

improvement of performance management instruments and measures to help the President of

the judicial offices in detecting the critical factors that influence the proceedings length and

timeliness.

In line with these purposes, the objective of the paper is to improve the judiciary

performance information through data mining techniques, even in absence of a pre-structure

dashboard. The current available statistics used to measure an office performance (or its

sections results) do not consider both the characteristics of the different legal matters and the

specific phases of the decisional processes, diminishing their utility in a steering perspective.

IJPSM

37,1

60