Administrative

Accountability
A Review of the Evolution, Meaning and Operationalization
of a Key Concept in Public Administration
LEDIVINA V. CARIÑO
“Public office is a public trust. Public Officers and Employees
shall serve with the highest degree of responsibility,
integrity, loyalty, and efficiency and shall remain
accountable to the people.”

Constitution of the Philippines

1973, Article XIII, Section I
Outline
• Types of Accountability
• Traditional Accountability
• Managerial Accountability
• Program Accountability
• Process Accountability
• Varieties of Public Administration
• Traditional Public Administration
• Development Administration
• New Public Administration
• Development Public Administration
• Public Administration and Accountability
• The Process of Regulating Behavior
• Control
• Supervision
• Influence
• Management
• Discretion and Accountability
Accountability
• “It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do,
for which we are accountable” Moliere (Jean-Baptiste
Poquelin)
• Is a central problem for governments which are or
claim to be democratic.
• The ultimate focus of accountability – People
“As the public becomes better educated, they also become
more aware, more demanding, less understanding and less
willing to accept average performance from governments”

Foster 1981:30
Four Standard Questions are Central to
Accountability:
• Who is considered accountable?
• To whom is he accountable?
• To what standards or values he is accountable?
• By what means is he accountable?
Kinds of Accountability

A. Traditional
B. Managerial
C. Program
D. Process
A. Traditional accountability
• Regularity of fiscal transactions and faithful compliance as
well as adherence to legal requirements and administrative
policies
• is a responsibility of the bureaucrat who has been given the
authority to discharge a particular function as an expression
of hierarchically-ordered legal responsibilities (Mckinney
1981:144).
A. Traditional accountability
• The Test of Legality:
• Determining if an act is within the provisions of laws and
regulations governing the agency;
• If the person/s who performed it have the authority to do so;
• Expects these procedures to be followed fairly and equitably
without regard to individual characteristics of the clients
interested in the transactions.
• Official sometimes protect themselves by making them
commit no violation, thus little encouragement of initiative
and innovative performance.
B. Managerial accountability
• Concerned with efficiency and economy in the use of funds,
property, manpower and other resources (Tantuico 1982:8)
• Person accountable is the manager, and he is responsible to his
superiors
• Government officials are responsible for more than just
compliance but the need for the constant concern to avoid waste
and unnecessary expenditures and to promote the judicious use
of public resources
• Cut “red tape” of government procedures – work simplification,
systems improvement, agency reorganization.
• Subjected to an operational / management audit – COA and
DBM.
2 Main Values:
• Economical operations – the elimination or reduction of needless
costs
• Efficient operations include
• holding the costs constant while increasing benefits;
• Holding the benefits constant while decreasing costs;
• Increasing the costs at a lower rate than benefits; and
• Decreasing costs at a lower rate than benefits
• Both pertain to reduction or elimination of costs, thus are
equivalent in meaning
C. Program Accountability
• Concerned with the results of government operations
• Main focus of this type of accountability is the head of the agency
• To secure its attainment, a comprehensive performance audit, an
objective examination of the financial and operations
performance using the standard 3Es, is conducted.
• Economy, Efficiency, and Effectiveness
C. Program Accountability
• Complete performance audits involves inquiry into the following:
• Whether the government unit is carrying out only authorized activities or
programs in the manner contemplated and whether they are accomplishing their
objectives
• Whether the programs and activities are conducted and expenditures are made in an
effective, efficient, and economical manner and in compliance with applicable
laws and regulations.
• Whether resources are being adequately controlled and used effectively, efficiently
and economically
• Whether all revenues and receipts from the operations under examinations are
being collected and properly accounted for
• Whether the entity’s accounting system complies with applicable accounting
principles, standards and related requirements; and
• The entity’s financial statements and operating reports properly disclose the
information required (Tantuico 1982:12)
D. Process accountability
• Empathizes procedures and methods of operation and focuses on
the black box inside systems which transforms inputs (the
concern of traditional and managerial accountability) to outputs
(the concern of program accountability).
• Recognizes that some goals may not be measurable directly and
surrogates, representing how goal-directed activity may be
performed, are used instead.
• Is directly applicable to intergovernmental relations
D. Process accountability
• McKinney’s adaptation of process accountability is to
deliver public good or service only after:
• Both providers and recipients have met together to agree in
advance
• Those responsible for providing the service are expected to
perform according to agreed-upon terms
• Likewise, recipients must agree to accept in advance specific
rewards or costs
 Table 1. Comparison of Different Kinds of Administrative Accountability

Traditional Managerial Program Process

Accountability Accountability Accountability Accountability
Who is accountable Employees and officials Administrator Administrator Administrator

To whom is he People through Same as Col. 1 Same as Col. 1 Same as Col. 1 and
accountable legislature, President, Others: professional Col. 3
Constitutional bodies, standards and Direct Accountability to
hierarchy individual conscience people thru their
participation in
negotiation

To what standard of Regularity, legality, and Economy and efficiency Economy, efficiency, 3Es plus
values is he compliance and effectiveness (3Es) decentralization and
accountable? participation

By what means is he Line-item budgeting, Management audit, Comprehensive audit, Negotiations

made accountable? traditional accounting, systems improvement program evaluation,
standard operating productivity
procedures measurement
The Varieties of Public Administration
• Traditional Public Administration
• Development Administration
• New Public Administration
• Development Public Administration
Traditional Public Administration
• Main emphasis is maintenance
• The role of public servants was how to implement decision made
elsewhere by policymakers who were not in the bureaucracy.
• Economy and efficiency of operations are the most important
goals.
• As a variety in the discipline, traditional PA constituted the main
doctrine until the late 50’s
Development Administration (DA)
• Is the variety that gained currency when colonies got political
independence and set their sights on the development of the
economy following the example of the West
• It is directed to the study of the countries called the Third World.
• Main task is the search for theories that can explain the
management of economic growth
• Involved looking for tools that can improve planning process and
the performance of staff functions. (PPBS)
• Culture became an important variable, often viewed as a
hindrance to the attainments of western style development.
New Public Administration (New PA)
• Born in the 70s who found traditional PA largely irrelevant to a
turbulent technological society crying for equity and social
justice.
• Put PA in the context of the society with its exploitative social
structure, to develop programs that can meet human needs.
• New PA advocated project management and the modular
organization in lieu of the bureaucracy.
• Moved away from economics to philosophy, or sought a blending
of both
• Implementation and service delivery is as just worthy of
attention as planning and the merit system.
Development Public Administration (DPA)
• Product of 80s, similar to New PA in its emphasis on the goals of
social justice, equity and the centrality of the human person.
• Focus problems of the Third World
• DPA advocates do not choose between equity and growth but
view continued productivity as the base upon which basic needs
would be provided for everyone in the society and benefits
would be distributed in a more equitable way.
• Empowerment of the people as participants in the process of
administration.
Development Public Administration (DPA)
• Not against bureaucracy as an organization, modification
through bureaucratic reorientation, change not of structures, but
of the people within.
• It searches for smaller possibly ad hoc, organizations for trying
out new approaches, for coordinating the activities of similar
agencies, and for involving those outside the organizations in
planning, implementation, and evaluation.
• In the Phils – Decentralization – seeks harmony between central
direction and responsiveness to particular needs. – Community
Development
Accountability and Public Administration
• A congruence of concerns is found in the types of accountability
and the varieties of public administration.
• There is an increasing reliance on program content and
participatory procedures, and stress on negotiation and even
self-determination of standards of accountability.
• Despite these changes, however, problems of graft and
corruption and the incongruence of official actions with public
interest remain.
 Public Administration Accountability

Traditional Public Administration Accountability of Regularity

Traditional Public Administration and

Managerial Accountability
Development Administration

New Public Administration Program Accountability

Development Public
Process Accountability
Administration
1. Traditional PA and the Accountability of
Regularity
• Traditional accountability demands the doctrine of the politics-
administration dichotomy, where decisions are made outside the
bureaucracy and compliance is compelled all through the
hierarchy but has its ultimate arbiter in bodies external to the
bureaucracy like the legislature and the courts.
• Rules and procedures are rigid thus requiring the checks on
performance on a line-by-line and strict pesos-and-centavos
accounting
2. Traditional PA, Development Administration
and Managerial Accountability

• Despite its congruence with most of traditional accountability,

the first variety of PA has encouraged the start of managerial
accountability through its emphasis on the economy and
efficiency of organizations
• A number of management tools developed under the DA still
tended to focus on inputs and the staff functions.
3. New Public Administration and Program
Accountability
• New PA sounded the call for the stress on effectiveness of
government activities while also underscoring the shift of
development goals from simple economic growth to more
humanly appropriate objectives.
• The techniques of program accountability fit the first thrust of
the New PA.
• Comprehensive auditing is a major tool – not fully encompass
• A better technique is program evaluation, especially the analysis
of impact.
4. Development PA and Process
Accountability
• Process accountability has a lot in common with DPA
• Reacceptance of the necessity of bureaucracy as long as it is
reoriented to include the participation of client and recipients in
the process of administration, and the decentralization of
decision making to local areas.
• PA -> LGUs and DOHs (rural health units and hospitals) – Bottom
up approach
The Process of Regulating Behavior
• Accountability may be elicited both through the imposition of
external controls and through the inculcation of self-regulating
values.
• Four Major Processes of Regulating Behavior
• Control
• Supervision
• Influence
• Management
Control
• Maybe external to or internalized by the regulated.
• External: Laws, bureaucratic rules, standards
• The authority to command and direct
Supervision
• More open minded allowing officials greater latitude of their actions
• Both regulatory and assistory
• Concept can be applied to any pair of agencies where one sets the
guidelines within which the other formulates its rules of action
Influence
• A -> B w/o command
• Rooted in one’s profession, ethical commitments and organizational
affiliations
• The influence is predicated not so much on his commands and
orders as on the congruence of the commitments of his
subordinates and himself which is exerted through moral and other
extra bureaucratic modes
Management
• The regulator take action as a hypothesis with un-assumed certainty
and allow the regulated some discretion in his approach to the
program – experiment
• Regulator accepts the possibility that he could be wrong and thus be
more receptive to other ideas of how to reach a certain goal.
• This would mean an accountability that would face up errors and
even embrace them as learning points for later growth
 Assumed Predictability of Results of Actions
Control Supervision Influence Management
Source of Power External to External to the Internalized by Both external
the regulated regulated and
regulated internalized
Kind of rules Direct General Moral, ethical Process Rules
commands Guidelines and other
programme extrabureaucra
d, decision tic standards
Assumed High Low High Low
predictability of
results of decision
Accountability and Types of Bureaucratic Power
Accountability Types of Bureaucratic Power
Traditional Accountability Control “Command and Direct”
“Regularity & Compliance”
Managerial Accountability Control and Supervision
“Avoiding Waste and Increase
Efficiency
Program Accountability Results with minimum
compliance with control
measures
Process Accountability Supervision and Management
Discretion and Accountability
Bureaucratic Norms vs. Professional Norms
• In theory, the conflict cannot occur since bureaucratic procedures
are supposed to be dependent on the same technical criteria that
guide the performance of the experts within the agency
• Procedures are based on regular transactions and on the usual
issues that an official may be expected to meet in the normal course
of his duties.
• When well-formulated, they may suffice for routine cases which
require little or no decision of the bureaucrat.
Legal and Moral Decisions
• Moral decisions are value-based decision that are content and text
specific’
• Legal decision: procedure-based decision that are dependent upon
historical precedent.
• In an effort to be regular and legal, bureaucrats may become legalistic,
stressing formal compliance with the letter of the law that may lead to
goal displacement where rules become the master while bureaucrats are
reduced to timidity, conservatism and technicism. (Merton et al. 1952)
• Too much legalism may even become a major factor inhibiting the move
towards development (Pye 1966)
Extrabureaucratic Standards and Irresponsible Behavior

• There would be fewer problems if the entrance of extra-

bureaucratic values into agency decision making were always an
unmixed blessing.
• Values are in fact not positive or negative determinants of
responsibility per se.
Extrabureaucratic Standards and Irresponsible Behavior

1. Nature of human being – when a person wants to please a person not

qualified to receive a service, he may disregard these rules or go
around them in order to suit this person (accommodation)
2. The complexity of the society – its no longer a homogenous mass. The
demands and pressures on government can not be easily transformed
to SOPs which brook no exceptions. It is not possible for rules to
anticipate and categorize every important set of situations
3. Inefficacy of the Legalistic Approach – the strictest laws on record has
not been able to hold down the incidence of graft and corruption.
Inefficiency of the law 3 main problems:

1. The systemic nature of corruption

• Corruption: tolerance if not outright encouragement of powerful members of
bureaucracy (syndicate)
2. The formalism in the laws
• A society has formalistic laws when they are not expected to be fully
implemented, only to serve a window-dressing role.
• Formalistic law is unpredictable and unfair and is not a good guide for
regulating behavior
3. The lack of political will
• Law is effective if implemented vigorously and fairly.
• Head of Agency as Role Model
Towards Increasing Accountability

Questions remain:
1. If officials are no longer expected to comply with direct orders, how
can they be regulated?
2. Won’t too much discretion result in even mere inefficiency and
corruption?
3. How can the people’s will be followed if bureaucrats are allowed to
do their own thing?
Thank you