Decentralized Innovation and Improvement
Court systems have concentrated too much authority for continuous improvement at the top where there are good intentions, but relatively few resources and little capacity. Court performance data are delivered too little and too late, if at all. When performance is presented to staff, it is often done so in endless documents stuffed with indecipherable figures and statistics, to make much of a difference. Performance data is a virtual temple secret that only the priests (designated top-management and analysts) can read and interpret. Courts should seek to give all court employees all the performance measurement information they need to make improvements themselves. Courts should tap into the capacities of all court employees to track and analyze performance data and to devise solutions to problems. A similar strategy, referred to as “radical transparency,” was advocated as a road map for economic recovery in a “manifesto” written by Daniel Roth in Wired March 2009: “Instead of assign...