PERFORMANCE-MEASUREMENT IN GOVERNMENT SERVICE PROVISION - THE CASE OFPOLICE SERVICES IN NEW-SOUTH-WALES

The NSW Government is implementing a financial framework which is desi gned to encourage government service providers to become more efficien t 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 T reasury will use DEA to help improve the efficiency of government serv ice providers by describing an analysis of the NSW Police Service. The results suggest that NSW police patrols (local police districts) coul d, on average, reduce input usage by 13.5 percent through better manag ement, and by 6 percent if the patrols could be restructured to achiev e the optimal scale. Results also indicate that differences in operati ng environments, such as location and socioeconomic factors, do not ha ve a significant influence upon the efficiency of police patrols.