Three chinese porcelain blue and white of officials. Each alert official modeled standing, his face in biscuit, wearing a hat and beaded necklace, his robe printed with dragons, a fan, ruyi-head sceptre or flute in his hand
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Government can make life more tolerable. Be it defending national borders, putting out fires, educating children, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, or tending to the aged, ill, or handicapped, public administrators, civil servants, and government bureaucracies perform many thankless services that social and economic institutions alone neither can nor want to undertake. Yet it is these tasks that enrich people’s lives, making it possible not simply to live, but to live well. Despite the important role that government plays in our lives, many of its organizations and functions remain a mystery to the average citizen.
Accountability
Accountability is an essential concept for all democratic governments as it underpins the processes by which people, elected as politicians or appointed to public office, demonstrate that they are acting responsibly. The trust and confidence in governments provided by robust accountability processes explain why communities and individuals allow themselves to be governed in a free society.
There are various definitions of accountability in the public sector, but there appears to be general agreement that an essential element is external scrutiny. Scrutiny occurs when politicians, public officials, or agencies charged with specific responsibilities are called to explain their actions or decisions to a person or body with authority (for example a minister reporting to Parliament), or to the community directly, and to accept appropriate sanctions or directions. Scrutiny to demonstrate accountability can occur in three ways.
Political accountability ultimately occurs through the ballot box. Although elections are aclear test of the collective accountability of governments, politicians, and their parties, elections are sometimes considered only partly effective as an accountability mechanism because they are infrequent and do not explicitly consider all issues for which governments are responsible.
Parliaments or legislatures are a primary accountability mechanism where individual ministers are questioned on their actions, their policies are debated, and in particular, their management of public finances closely examined.
Scrutiny by the media, industry bodies, unions, and increasingly, special interest groups (for example Amnesty International and Greenpeace) is also now a significant part of the political accountability process.
Managerial accountability has risen in importance in recent years as public administration has increasingly adopted concepts largely drawn from the private sector. Managerial accountability is important in terms of defining the trail of authority from public agency staff through agency chief executives to ministers and then to Parliament and the community.
However, managerial accountability is limited in that it only focuses on the individual relationships without considering the overall accountability of public officers to the community they serve. A particularly difficult area is that of ensuring adequate accountability for public services provided by the private sector through contracts or privatization.
Legal accountability reflects the requirement that governments and public officials must work within the law, which defines not only the things that can or cannot be done but, in many cases, also how things must be done. While governments may seek to change laws, this is not always possible due to political constraints, and they must therefore act within existing legal requirements and processes. Many jurisdictions now also provide for more direct public accountability through an ombudsman, “freedom of information” and “whistle-blower” legislation, and through administrative appeals tribunals. Other definitions include individual accountability in terms of professional requirements, codes of conduct and personal ethical standards, the controls of peer pressure and social norms, responsiveness to the needs of citizens, and the requirement for community consultation. While useful in understanding the various ways in which politicians and other public officials are expected to act and respond, it is important that these other definitions do not detract from the core concept of external scrutiny.
Not surprisingly, accountability comes at a cost. These costs include the cost of elections, the protocols required for parliamentary inquiries, and the extensive documentation required to support public works and procurement processes.
Accountability processes also sometimes lead to minor reductions in efficiency in the provision of public services. However, the real or perceived costs of public accountability are a small price to pay for the demonstration of transparency and honesty in democratic governments. A major challenge for public administrators is therefore to provide cost-effective services while also meeting appropriate accountability requirements.
For more information: Hughes, Owen E. Public Management and Administration: An Introduction, 2d ed. New York: Macmillan, 1998.
* Published in Likedin
