Application of DEA methods for evaluating efficiency in museums, galleries, and monuments in the Czech Republic
Abstract
The article analyzes the effeciency of a specific section of Czech culture; specifically in the areas of museums, galleries, and monuments. Based on a literature review we can state that apart from one project on performance indicators designed for benchmarking, evaluations of efficiency and effectiveness in this area have not been fully exploited.
Our pilot study focuses on the use of the method of data envelopment analysis for evaluating the effeciency of museums, galleries, and monuments in the Czech Republic. This analysis is applied to entities established by the central government.
We draw the necessary data from the annual reports of individual entities for the years 2011-2013. On the input side, we have defined the following factors: the number of branches in operation, the area in meters squared of the existing expositions, and the size of the budget.
On the output side, we have defined the following variable number of organized exhibitions, the number of cultural and educational events for the public, the number of visitors, and economic independence. The evaluation criterion is the result of an objective function, where if the value is equal to one, we consider the institution to be efficient, but if the value is 0, the institutions are deemed inefficient.
An analysis showed relatively large differences in the efficiency among the individual institutions. There is therefore room for increased efficiency which can be achieved by implementing appropriately structured performance indicators.