Application of Data Envelopment Analysis for evaluating Tehran municipal districts efficiency in terms of citizens' requests responds

Performance assessment is the process of quantifying the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization's performance-related activities. Efficiency refers to the amount of success of an organization in the optimal use of inputs to produce more outputs. Evaluating the efficiency of organizational units using data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a new method for performance assessment. Since Tehran Municipality is required to respond and satisfy citizens, the present study investigates the efficiency of the 22 districts of Tehran Municipality in responding to citizens' requests using DEA. We proposed DEA base on Input-oriented and Output-oriented models under the Constant Return to Scale (CRS) and Variable Return to scale (VRS) assumptions. This study uses the number of staff, per capita cost, the number of messages in the 137 system as inputs and response time and, the validity of response performance as outputs of the model. The proposed model with these variables has not been considered in similar studies. Findings indicate that in CRS model, five districts (4, 8, 9, 13, 17) are operating efficiently and, in VRS model, four more districts (3, 14, 21, 22) are efficient as well. The ranking of efficient units was obtained using Andersen and Petersen (AP) model. Finally, it was determined how much change in the inputs and outputs improves the relative efficiency of inefficient districts. The most important managerial result of this study is providing suggestions for improving the efficiency of inefficient districts.