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ACUS committee debates how to measure timeliness and quality in agency adjudication offices
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Summary
Committee members pressed the draft recommendation for clearer definitions of timeliness (elapsed vs consumed time), debated mean versus median and case-type disaggregation, and agreed to cross-reference prior ACUS timeliness and quality recommendations rather than duplicate technical measures in this draft.
At a meeting of the Administrative Conference of the United States’ Committee on Adjudication, members focused a sustained portion of discussion on how to measure timeliness and decision quality for agency adjudication offices. Russell Wheeler warned the draft conflated different time measures: “As written, it doesn't really distinguish between elapsed time and consumed time,” and urged the committee to specify whether the recommendation targets elapsed process time (filing to termination) or the adjudicator’s consumed work time.
Professor Jennifer Ko, the project consultant, said the draft intended to narrow the measurement to the core decisional window—from case-file review to writing a decision—rather than every delay that can occur between filing and termination. Committee members debated whether to require mean or median metrics, whether data collection would impose burdens on adjudicators, and whether agencies should disaggregate by case type so policymakers can compare like with like.
Several members recommended separating time and quality measures in the draft: time metrics to capture processing speed and separate, referenced ACUS quality-assurance recommendations to assess decision soundness. Members also suggested an overarching metric—time to complete the decisional process—above more granular sub-measures such as average time for adjudicators to commence and complete a hearing, median or mean time to decision, and percent of cases pending past defined thresholds.
The committee did not adopt a final numeric standard. Instead, members directed staff to cross-reference prior ACUS recommendations on timeliness and quality and to clarify definitions and measurement approaches in the revised draft to be circulated before the next meeting.
