1. Accountability

2. “ … a relationship between an actor and a forum, in which the actor has an obligation to explain and justify his or her conduct, the forum can pose questions and pass judgement, and the actor may face consequences.” (Bovens, 2007) Accountability

3. Public organisations are entrusted with taxpayers’ money and an obligation to use that wisely. Financial Accountability

4. Public organisations also have a responsibility to treat all citizens fairly (and to protect citizens’ trust in government, or government’s “public capital”, based on their perceptions of fairness). This therefore includes protection from abuses of power and the maintenance of the rules and procedures to prevent that. Accountability for Fairness

5. Reflects a managerial concern with the accomplishment of public purposes. However, “…we can not do this with rules, procedures and standards. To specify the level of performance we expect from a public agency we need some kind of objective, goal or target – a clear benchmark of performance”. (Behn 2001) Accountability for Performance

6. Hierarchical Accountability Hierarchical accountability involves supervisory and organisational directives, including rules and standard operating procedures. It is based on close supervision of individuals whose work is clearly identifiable, who have low work autonomy, and of whom obedience is the expected behaviour. Such relationships are exemplified by traditional ‘merit’-based civil service systems that are organised around position-based schema.

7. Legal accountability emphasises compliance with some externally derived expectations or standards of performance. It involves close scrutiny and oversight as the means by which actors are held to answer for their performance. The relationship is thus one of (external) principal and agent. Legal Accountability

8. Political accountability involves relationships that are concerned with satisfying key external stakeholders such as elected officials, clients and other agencies. The essential point being that the accountable official anticipates and responds to someone else’s expectations or agenda. Political Accountability

9. Professional accountability involves relationships that emphasise responsibility and deference to expertise. Performance standards are established by professional norms, accepted protocols and prevailing practices of one’s peer or work group. Such relationships are marked by high levels of operating autonomy. A similar perspective might be taken of a Cultural Accountability that is based on a distinct set of cultural norms and practices. Professional Accountability

10. Horizontal accountability, “opens up the question of relationships between co-authorised actors and institutions; and between authorised actors and those who perform public services but retain the status of private actors.” Considine (2002) Horizontal Accountability

11. The traditional model of public administration attempts to de-politicise the civil service to a body that carries out and administers the instructions of its political masters. This model, associated with Woodrow Wilson, suggests policy and politics can be strictly separate from administration. Traditional Bureaucratic Accountability

12. Officials merely advise the political leadership on policy and manage their resources as well as possible on behalf of the political leadership. It is really only the politician that is accountable in the system, as the officials are neutral and anonymous administrators and not associated with particular policies. The system becomes concerned with accountability for errors rather than achievements. Traditional Bureaucratic Accountability

13. “ … we need a mental model of accountability; we need to shift from the implicit conceptions of linear, hierarchical, uni-directional, holder-holdee accountability to an explicit recognition that we need mutual and collective accountability.” Behn (2001) Managerial Accountability

14. The traditional model limits citizens’ access to accountability to that accessed through the political leadership. Managerial accountability recognises that more direct links to the citizenry exist through consultation, interest groups or simply through the organisation realising that it needs the approval and support (through co-production) of a broad group of stakeholders. Managing those stakeholder relationships is seen as p[art of the normal duties of officials – resulting in more direct accountability. Managerial Accountability

15. Accountable management requires, “an agreed definition of tasks, measures of performance, appropriate organisation and control of resources, systems for monitoring and reporting, and incentives and sanctions.” OECD (1991) Accountable Management

16. “…. There are many tasks carried out by public sector organisations that do not lend themselves to tightly specified performance criteria, which if imposed would subvert or distort those tasks. Rational systems of control are dependent on an ability to know what the ‘facts’ are; but the unavoidable political dimensions of government systems mean that the ‘facts’ are invariably highly disputable.” Gregory (2012) Task matters

17. Similarly, the growing devolution of responsibility for service provision has resulted in private and semi- public agencies spending public funds on activities that are all but immune from review. Attempts to solve these problems involve moving away from both legal and market based relationships to explore network relations. Structure matters

18. “In these cases the question of accountability goes beyond being a matter of compliance (legal strategy) or performance (economic strategy) and becomes a matter of organisational convergence (cultural strategy).” Considine (2002) Accountability in Networks

19. If public officials are accountable solely for the achievement of goals mandated by political authority, then as mere instruments of that authority they cannot be held personally responsible for the consequences of their actions. [That argument was rejected at the Nuremberg trials and more recent human rights enquiries and hearings.] The Paradox of Accountability

20. On the other hand, acknowledgement of the political context also leads to a recognition of the discretionary use of public authority by all those involved. Because public officials are political actors in their own right, involved in shaping public purposes through the discretionary authority they necessarily exercise, they can not be held as purely instrumentally accountable. The Paradox of Accountability

21. “Politicians and officials who wield public power need institutional space within which to think and act as morally responsible individuals, not just as agents of constitutionally and hierarchically aligned superiors.” Gregory (2012) The Paradox of Accountability

22. “To consider accountability merely as a signing off on predetermined targets is to ignore the highly dynamic and interdependent character of both horizontal and vertical relationships” Considine (2002) What is required is a flexible approach that facilitates organisational learning – employing ‘double-loop’ as well as ‘single-loop’ mechanisms. Complex Accountability

23. ??? Accountability