Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 21st NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Administration and Management of Internal Security Agencies Author(s) Aleksander Aristovnik University of Ljubljana Ljubljana Slovenia Mencinger Jernej, Janko Seljak, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Administration, Ljubljana, Slovenia Title Performance measurement in Slovenian police at local level: A DEA approach File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Aleksander Aristovnik Abstract Up until recently, the measurement of the efficiency and effectiveness of the state administration was somewhat neglected. A prevalent attitude was that the state administration functions on its own accord and does not merit particular attention given that it has no competition. However, the requirements of the functioning of the public administration and thus also the state administration are becoming increasingly demanding. Due to the limited volume of public funds, there is a growing need to establish efficiency and performance so as to improve the management of the organization as such and to satisfy the needs of the public at large. In this respect, also the Slovenian Police should necessarily join the process of adjusting to modern trends, as should the state administration. The global financial and economic crisis also offers a window of opportunity for deep structural reforms to the police since police activity is a cornerstone of all other institutions of the rule of law, freedom and security; without the police service there can be no development, democracy, economic progress or social and legal equality. The police carry out one of the main activities of public importance that is crucial for ensuring the uninterrupted functioning of modern society. The state allocates a relatively large amount of budget funding for police operations (e.g. in 2010 the Republic of Slovenia allocated about EUR 330 million to the police, accounting for 3.1% of total budget expenditure) and a large share of public employees work in the police (i.e. 8,989 employees, accounting for 26.3% of state administration staff in Slovenia in 2010). Due to the importance of this activity and the mentioned desire to improve the use of public funds, ever more countries have decided to transpose successful practices from the private sector into the police sphere and introduce their efficiency and performance measuring methods to the greatest extent possible. Thus, in the paper we attempt to examine the relative efficiency of the Slovenian Police at the local level. The paper considers how previous studies have modelled the role of policing in their specifications of inputs and outputs. In particular, a three-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique is presented and then applied to measure the relative efficiency of police-work-related data for all police stations in 2010. This also involves a Tobit regression to control for external (environmental) factors. The data obtained from the police databases are analysed through the Frontier Analyst 4.0 and SPSS 19.0 statistical package software. The results of the DEA empirical analysis reveal some significant differences between police stations in Slovenia in 2010 in terms of their efficiency and effectiveness. Indeed, the empirical results of the reveal that approximately 80 percent of the observed PSs are inefficient relative to their peers. More detailed analysis also shows that, in general, PSs with more than 50 posts occupied are on average less efficient. To some extent, the differences in efficiency scores are a consequence of external factors which the management of police stations cannot influence, yet they are even more a result of better governance and organized and police work. Thus, the presented methodology and obtained efficiency results can be a valuable tool in the hands of police management when deciding how to optimally allocate the limited public resources.
