Draining the judiciary bottleneck: A quasi-experiment in improving a government service

This study describes judicial reform as a quasi-experiment. The reform is the deployment and implementation of the GICA-Justicia (Gestión Integral de Calidad y Acreditación: Quality and Accreditation Integral Management) Quality-Management Standard (QMS) within the Second Court of Appeal of Costa Rica's Supreme Court; the reform includes process improvements following the implementation. The study of impact includes a direct comparison to its homologous in Panama's Justice System. The GICA-Justicia emerges in the QMS environment as a process-performance tracking and improvement tool for accreditation of district courts and courts of appeal. This study offers “sui generis state of the art” empirical know-how via the use of an interrupted time series quasi-experiment. This study contributes to literature by unveiling a successful new judicial service improvement design in a Latin-American context.