Can You Measure Review Quality?

For most communications surveillance programs, measuring review activity is relatively straightforward. How many items were reviewed? How many were escalated? How much work remains outstanding?

Those metrics matter. But they answer only part of the question.

A reviewer can complete hundreds of alerts and still make inconsistent decisions. Two reviewers can examine similar communications and reach different conclusions. A reviewer may apply the wrong mark or label, miss an escalation, or interpret a policy differently from the rest of the team.

That creates a more important question for surveillance leaders:

How do you know whether reviews are being performed well?

Moving from review activity to review quality

Quality assurance and appraisal processes help organizations answer that question. Supervisors or appraisers can examine work completed by reviewers and determine whether the appropriate actions were taken.

But performing QA is only part of the process. Organizations also need metrics that allow them to measure the results and identify where review quality can be improved.

Arctera's Reviewer Assessment Activity Date report brings reviewer and assessment activity together, providing metrics that can help organizations measure both reviewer performance and the quality assessment of their work.

Instead of simply demonstrating that review occurred, surveillance teams gain information that can help them understand how consistently and effectively review decisions are being made.

Measure the actions that matter to your program

Not every organization measures reviewer quality in the same way.

One surveillance program might assess whether reviewers applied the correct review mark. Another may focus on labels used to identify specific findings. Others may evaluate comments, escalations, or formal appraisal actions.

The report allows organizations to select the activities relevant to their own QA process. Reviewer activity can include: Marks, Escalations, Comments, Labels, and Appraisals.

Organizations can then select separate assessment activities performed by appraisers on items that reviewers have already processed. For labels, reporting can even be narrowed to specific label names.

This flexibility is important because it allows the reporting to support the organization's existing QA methodology rather than requiring the QA program to conform to a predefined measurement model.

Compare reviewer actions with assessment activity

This is where the reporting becomes particularly useful.

Imagine that a surveillance team uses a set of review marks to disposition communications. A QA appraiser subsequently reviews a sample of that work and applies an appraisal action indicating whether the original decision was appropriate.

The Reviewer Assessment Activity Date report can provide metrics for both sets of activity.

A different team might use labels as part of its assessment process. Another might use comments or escalation activity. The report can be configured around those processes as well.

The objective isn't to impose a universal definition of reviewer accuracy. It is to provide the metrics organizations need to evaluate reviewer performance using their own assessment methodology.

That can help supervisors identify questions worth investigating:

• Are reviewers applying decisions consistently?
• Are particular reviewers or teams showing different patterns in assessment outcomes?
• Are there areas where additional guidance or coaching may be appropriate?
• Is review quality changing over time?

These questions move surveillance management beyond measuring how much work was completed toward understanding the quality of that work.

Flexible reporting for different audiences

Reviewer-quality metrics can serve different levels of the surveillance organization. A supervisor may want to understand an individual reviewer's performance, while a department manager may compare results across a team. Compliance leadership can use broader metrics to understand whether review and QA processes are operating effectively.

Through Enhanced Reporting, the same metrics can support operational supervision, reviewer coaching, QA analysis and management reporting.

From evidence of review to evidence of review quality

Surveillance programs need to demonstrate that required reviews occurred. But mature programs increasingly need to answer the next question:

How well are those reviews being performed?

The Reviewer Assessment Activity Date report helps organizations take that next step by bringing reviewer actions and quality-assessment activity together in measurable reporting.

That means supervisors can move beyond counts of completed work and gain better insight into reviewer performance, consistency and assessment outcomes.

The result is more than another operational report.

It is a way to move from evidence of review toward evidence of review quality.

What’s New in Arctera Surveillance Metrics

The latest release of the Arctera Unified Platform introduces powerful metrics and automated scheduling to bring crystal-clear oversight to your surveillance lifecycle. Watch this quick demo to see how our updated reporting experience streamlines surveillance workflows, automates scheduling, and delivers faster data access for compliance teams.

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