Quantitative throughput measures can be inversely related to actual service quality

Evidence

But in all these instances there may be inverse relationships between the quality of street-level bureaucrats’ involvement and the number of clients they process. If simply having people processed or having them attached to public service workers were the issue, these measures would bear a meaningful relationship to desired service. But our expectations of these public services are different. It is not sufficient that people are assigned a social worker, sit in a classroom, or have their cases heard. We also expect that they will be processed with a degree of care, with attention to their circumstances and potential. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1210

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the construct-validity critique of performance metrics and to Goodhart’s law in the public-management literature.