Managing Performance in the Forensic Sciences: Expectations in Light of Limited Budgets

Abstract

Abstract For forensic service providers worldwide, the demand for high-quality services greatly outpaces available resources to meet those requests. The gap between the demand for services and the resource-restricted supply of those services has implications for managing performance: the effectiveness and efficiency of forensic science. The effectiveness of forensic science is directly related to the quality of the scientific analysis and the timeliness with which that analysis is provided, while efficiency is associated with attempts to minimize costs without negatively impacting quality. An inevitable result of the demand and supply gap is a backlog that results in downstream effects on timeliness, service, and quality. One important strategy to respond to the demand-supply imbalance is continual process improvement. Collaborative benchmarking as a basis for process improvement is another approach. This paper discusses the disjunction between perceived and actual value for forensic services and the rationale for providers to evaluate, improve, and re-tool their processes toward continual improvement given limited resources. Keywords: Managementprocess improvementforensic service providers Notes 1. The term opportunity cost is a reference to the economic cost of a decision. Rather than limiting our view to accounting costs, the cost of any action may be much more than just the pecuniary expense. Opportunity cost refers instead to the value of the next best alternative. That is, choosing to take a particular action implies foregoing some alternative action. That forgone action is the true measure of cost. 2. Notice that this trade-off in effectiveness may have little impact on efficiency where efficiency is a measure of cost per scientific test. 3. The phrase economies of scale is a reference to another type of efficiency in which greater economies of scale refers to reductions in the average cost from providing a good or service. Perfect economies of scale occur when average cost is minimized. 4. Note that the additional benefit may be either a revenue-based (expense reduction) measure or a utility-based measure, a perception of the gain. 5. As noted above, the measure of cost is more appropriately an opportunity cost (economic cost) rather than an accounting cost. 6. Personal communication, Hilton Kobus. Several examples throughout are offered from one author's (Hilton Kobus) professional experience at operational forensic laboratories. 7. Reporting is not always and not necessarily labor intensive. The reporting requirements are at least partially dependent on legislation and/or jurisdiction. Law and court rules permitting, it may be possible to automate reporting of certain types of routine casework, for example, drugs and toxicological analysis and DNA database hits. 8. The FORESIGHT Project is funded through awards from the National Institute of Justice, 2003-RC-CX-K001 and 2008-DN-BX-K223. 9. Externalities are also involved. In one author's (Max Houck) discussion with EU and U.S. DNA analysts, it was determined that the U.S. analyst testified more in one month than the EU analyst did in one year. This kind of burden on an analyst's time preparing for testimony, testifying, and travel certainly effects their productivity.