Decision matrix for prioritising services: first steps towards full-scale impact analysis of a public agency

Evaluating quantitative socio-economic cost-benefit level impacts of public administrations/agencies is urgently called for but still a thinly charted out territory in science. This paper presents the first steps in a process of prioritising services of a public organisation via a case study of a Finnish agency. The prioritisation is made in order to enable later analysis of the effectiveness of the agency and the evaluation of the impact of its services. The main contribution of this article is in laying out the first steps of a novel and normative process for identification of the services that are most relevant in this respect. The process entails four iterative steps: 1) service catalogue mapping; 2) design of evaluation criteria; 3) compilation of decision matrix; 4) multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) - and recommendations thereof. Steps 1-3 are discussed in this article in detail, the end result being a decision matrix for MCDA.