The Superior Council of Judiciary has been recently working in order to determine the reduction of civil pending proceedings by the Courts of first instance, in particular of the ancient proceedings in which is higher the probability to incur in penalties for high duration.

For this purpose, the Seven Commission of the Council, in collaboration with the Statistical Office, has started since 2011 to conduct every year a work of design, support and analysis of data deriving from the Management Programs required by a specific law to Court of first and second instance.

The efficiency of judiciary offices may be connected to different variables. In the aim of deriving a unique statistical measure of the efficiency of each Court of first instance, based on different input and output variables, we applied a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a non-parametrical linear programming technique able to produce an efficiency index varying between 0 and 1: values closer to 1 indicate a major efficiency.

In detail, in the aim of locating the best Courts and allow locating the other Courts by comparison, we chose to apply an output-oriented DEA model. The latter model estimates the amount of higher output‑efficiencies each office could reach by using its fixed level of input, given that the resources available in the different judiciary offices is fixed and can be modified only through measures taken or approved by the Justice Ministry and the Superior Council of Judiciary, measures related to the individual resources coverages and the eventual offices organigram variation.

We further analysed the potential influence of the activity of the Council on the performance of judgmental offices measured in terms of organization variables, trough Beta Regression models on the efficiencies resulted from DEA models. Dimensions of Court of first instance as well as their geographical distribution have been accounted in the measure and/or in the evaluation of the deterrent efficiency factors.

Comparisons have been applied between efficiency indexes computed in the last two years and between the Beta Regressions fitted over the efficiency indexes related to both years accounting for different variables such as the duration procedures, the geographical partition, the dimension of the offices, the number of best practises adopted by the offices (good practises to be followed by the judiciary offices that the Council judges worth of attention), directive job assigned, the organigram variation, the number of specialized sections, the turnover of judges, the number of active enterprises for the Court of first instance and the offices turnover, etc.

Results from DEA models show that offices more efficient are located mainly in the Nord and in the Centre of Italy; furthermore, the variable “duration procedure†affects directly and significantly, the judiciary efficiency of Court of first instance and the offices from the North of Italy are significantly more efficient wrt the offices of the Centre and the South.

From the Beta Regression model results that in the civil sector, the increasing of the organigram, has contributed to improve the ability of planning adequately a reduction of ancient pending procedures, reflecting the adequacy of the organigram variation after the Justice Minister and the Superior Council of Judiciary related decisions. The planning capacity is also linked to the geographical partition and is greater in the North of Italy.