Leveraging the information assets of justice (Pharos)

Managing Performance at the justice ministry

The Justice Ministry employs more than 73,000 people with a budget of €7.1 billion. It manages judicial services, prison administration and legal protection of the young. In 2006, following enactment of the Organic Law relating to the Finance Laws (LOLF), the Ministry started a major performance management program. The project, named Pharos, covers the legal framework.

The challenge

The Justice Ministry wanted to transform the announced cut in its budgets into an opportunity to work more efficiently.

In a system populated with judges, all theoretically equal, some have appeared to receive a new role under the regulations as budget manager. It was therefore necessary to equip them to enable them to see their mission through successfully without being in an awkward position with their peers. Finally, judicial services were provided with sources of information, software, and multiple information circuits that lacked uniformity.

An inadequate number of staff were responsible for management audit. Decisions regarding operation, resource allocation or strategy were thus taken based on information that might be incomplete. It was therefore necessary to provide the different jurisdictions and the central administration with an identical and comprehensive system of indicators correlating data for budgets, human resources and activity.

To improve decision-making, the Justice Ministry initially had to have concise, comprehensive and reliable information available, regularly updated and shared. The data also had to be integrated and unified to allow it to be consolidated. Finally this information had to be secure. 

The solution

We have supported the Ministry throughout the design of the program. We began the work with future users by developing familiarization with the concepts of performance management in order to bring out their needs. We then paid special attention to analyzing existing data at the Ministry.

The Ministry actually wanted to centralize all the information spread among the scattered systems in the various jurisdictions and restore it all in a standard format according to explicit, uniform definitions. Analysis of information such as the number of cases, handling times, types of cases, legal expenses or accounting and budgetary data enabled us to prioritize then and plan future improvements. Finally, we helped the judicial services draft implementation specifications for the necessary IT systems.

The results

The Ministry actually wanted to centralize all the information spread among the scattered systems in the various jurisdictions and restore it all in a standard format according to explicit, uniform definitions. Analysis of information such as the number of cases, handling times, types of cases, legal expenses or accounting and budgetary data enabled us to prioritize then and plan future improvements. Finally, we helped the judicial services draft implementation specifications for the necessary IT systems.

  • Report information monthly (dashboards for jurisdictions, judicial regions at national level), annually (for example annual performance reports) or on demand (visit by the Minister for Justice, monograph of jurisdictions and responsibilities)
  • Analyze costs and performance over time in all departments
  • Have available, for management discussion, documents that are shared or used for comparison in order to allocate resources as well as possible.

Pharos is now the official tool for management dialogue at the Justice Ministry. New data sources are added regularly. Thus Chorus, the State budgetary and accounting management system, were integrated in 2010.

Version 2, planned in 2011, will be enhanced with new functionality, such as reporting by geographical area.

A sub-department responsible for performance and methods has been created in the judicial services, contributing to improving the long term efficiency of the Justice system.

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