Making Accountability Work

Dilemmas for Evaluation and for Audit

Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc, Burt Perrin, Jeremy Lonsdale, Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc, Jeremy Lonsdale, Burt Perrin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780765803993
• eBook ISBN: 9781351507691
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"Like honesty and clean water, """"accountability"""" is invariably seen as a good thing. Conversely, the absence of accountability is associated with most of the greatest abuses in human history. Accountability is thus closely linked with the exercise of power and the legitimacy of policies and those pursuing them. This book looks at the role of evaluation and of audit as key elements in democratic accountability processes. The contributors explore the apparent paradox of there being more accountability-related activities today than ever before, at the same time as much public debate laments what is seen as a lack of actual accountability. Such a situation raises a number of questions: Is there a need for different approaches to establishing accountability or can current arrangements be modified to make them more effective? Are present practices part of the problem and are they preventing a mature debate about performance improvement taking place? How can systems awash with performance information ensure that at least some of it makes sense to a wide range of potential users? How is it that greater accountability and transparency can so quickly have become associated with concerns about perverse incentives and be seen by some as a costly burden? The volume includes detailed case studies and synthesizes up-to-date research evidence drawn from very different governmental systems, ending with practical advice for those involved in the accountability processes. In doing so, it attempts to address both conceptual ambiguities about the notion of """"accountability"""" and the practical uncertainties over its implications for democratic government. This book is aimed at serious people who think about trends in the use of evaluation and audit in seeking to hold governments accountable for their actions and performance."

Part One

Modern-Day Accountability: Evaluation and Audit Challenged

1

Accountability—The Challenges for Two Professions

Introduction

Jeremy Lonsdale and Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc

Like honesty and clean water, “accountability” is invariably seen as a “good thing”; few argue against what has been called a “non-contestable concept” (Wolf, 1999). Conversely, the absence of accountability is associated with most of the greatest abuses in human history. Unchecked by the need to explain themselves, a long list of politicians, businessmen and public officials of all shapes, sizes and professions have abused their roles. Accountability is thus closely linked with the exercise of power and the legitimacy of policies, and those pursuing them. As Gregory (2000) suggests “Issues of accountability…are as much moral and ethical as they are technical in nature, and impinge firmly upon the trust needed to underpin a democratically healthy relationship between politicians, bureaucrats and citizens.”

This book looks at the role of evaluation and of audit as key elements in democratic accountability processes. It explores the apparent paradox of there being more accountability related activities today than ever before, at the same time as much public debate laments what is seen as a lack of actual accountability. Such a situation—if indeed it is true—raises a number of questions. Is there a need for different approaches to establishing accountability or can current arrangements be modified to make them more effective? Are present practices part of the problem and are they preventing a mature debate about performance improvement taking place? How can systems awash with performance information ensure that at least some of it makes sense to a wide range of potential users? And how is it that greater accountability and transparency—fairly recent phenomena in most countries—can so quickly have become associated with concerns about perverse incentives and be seen by some as a costly burden?

This book—written by twelve authors from seven different countries with many years’ experience of participating in and observing accountability processes—is aimed at evaluators, auditors and policymakers keen to think further about trends in the use of evaluation and audit in seeking to hold governments accountable for their actions and performance. It includes detailed case studies and synthesizes up to date research evidence drawn from very different governmental systems, ending with practical advice for those involved in the accountability processes. In doing so, it attempts to address both conceptual ambiguities about the notion of “accountability” and the practical uncertainties over its implications for democratic government.

Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc’s opening chapter explores the key concepts involved and places them in a modern context, but a few words are needed by way of introduction. In its simplest terms, accountability is the requirement of a public organization or individual to provide an account to some other organization or person and to explain and be responsible for actions taken. Accountability requires some external force, usually a body with political legitimacy (but at times pressure from civil society can play its part), to assess what has been done and to evaluate this against some criteria. Traditionally, the rendering of an account also implies a subservient relationship—there is an obligation to account placed on one party, often at a particular time or in a specified format. There is then the question of whether the account can be trusted in its own right or whether some third-party verification should be sought. The rendering of an account also implies that some judgment will need to be made as to whether the person or organization rendering the account has fulfilled the expectations made of them or whether the objectives have been met. And, following judgment—to be made on the basis of some form of evidence, perhaps a report or oral hearing—there may be the possibility of, or the need for, sanctions, which in some circumstances may be serious for individuals or organizations.

Commentators such as Behn (2001) now emphasize the increasingly complex and contested—indeed, “fuzzy”—nature of accountability. One aspect is the question of accounting for what. Traditionally, this may have been about complying with processes and laws, but in more recent times has increasingly encompassed accountability for performance—the theme of much of this book. Such an assessment may not be clear-cut. There may be ambiguity over what was to be achieved, and achievement itself may be hard to measure or attribute. A further complication is the question of accounting to whom. Behn discusses the contrast between traditional “linear, hierarchical, uni-directional, holder-holdee accountability” and a more multi-directional nature of accountability in many modern organizations and in communities. This is particularly the case where organizations are working in complex partnerships (of the type examined in our previous volume on collaboration in public services [Gray, Jenkins, Leeuw and Mayne, 2003]) or where there are multiple stakeholders of a particular service or function including “consumers.” Much of the consideration in this book looks at the issues associated with the more traditional accountability arrangements, but Owen, in particular, looks at accountability downwards to users of services.

Much recent debate has acknowledged that the complexity is closely linked to the changing political and administrative contexts in which accountability relations are played out. Influenced by “new public management ideas,” in many countries in the last fifteen to twenty years, new organizational structures have been established to deliver public services, leading to less clear hierarchical relations, responsibilities, and accountabilities. The changes are also associated with “a shift from traditional Weberian, rule-bound, bureaucracies to results-oriented organizations, [designed to] free up innovative managerial capability” (Gregory, 2000). Pollitt (2003:98) argues that these changes—including lean, autonomous organizational forms, a focus on outputs and outcomes, greater use of performance indicators, contract-like relationships, and the use of markets in the delivery of public services—“have challenged the adequacy of traditional concepts of hierarchical accountability and led to an international debate about how traditional mechanisms can be supplemented (not replaced) by other forms. The debate has become intricate, and there is as yet (and may well never be) any single model of what new arrangements would be most appropriate.”

A common theme of the debate is that, in various ways, there are accountability deficits. Firstly, it has been argued, categories of organizations are inherently unaccountable, because of the way they have been set up. In The Netherlands, for example, there has been considerable political discussion since the 1990s on the role of “arm’s length bodies” (commonly known as quangos), once highly fashionable, but now increasingly under criticism with respect to their accountability for their performance. Such concerns usually relate to issues such as insufficient transparency of activities or limited democratic influence over the appointment of senior officials. Linked to this, a second aspect is the idea that deliberate changes in the nature and structure of government are reducing overall accountability, with governments allowing some types of organization to slip beyond the control of accountability arrangements in order—they argue—that they can be free to act more commercially or with less central control. Although some might argue that more market-based approaches have less need for traditional accountability (since these were partly a replacement for the absence of market forces), Lonsdale notes in his chapter that parliamentarians in the United Kingdom remain committed to the idea that the same standards of accountability for public money should be maintained regardless of the form of the body spending it (Committee of Public Accounts, 2000). Similarly, in Canada, parliamentarians expressed considerable concern over new arm’s-length foundations set up by the government as private corporations from the late 1990s onwards, which the Auditor General argued were beyond the reach of Parliament. After considerable pressure, these foundations have now been brought under the oversight of the Auditor General.

A third concern has been that when major problems occur it can be difficult, if not impossible, to establish who was accountable and responsible, perhaps because arrangements were too complicated (the problem of ‘many hands’ described by Bemelmans-Videc in her chapter). In an extreme example in the United Kingdom in 2000, one parliamentary committee, investigating the loss of £8 billion in anticipated savings as the result of a failure to properly inform citizens about a change in pensions legislation, expressed considerable frustration that, despite two separate and detailed scrutinies, it had not proved possible to establish who had been responsible for a very simple mistake or indeed who was now accountable for something that had happened more than a decade earlier (Public Administration Committee, 2000). Was it current senior officials, who were not involved at the time, or those accountable at the time who were now either retired or in entirely different roles? They came to no definite conclusion.

Finally, there have often been complaints from the media that even when major problems occur and responsibility is clear, no one is ever held to account (by which they usually mean punished in some way) for failure or wrongdoing. As Pollitt (2003:95) again comments, “In the not too distant past it seemed that ministers and senior public servants were rather easily able to conceal and cover up incompetence and wrong-doing, as the long litany of public policy fiascos, disasters and frauds in an uncomfortably large number of countries bears witness.” Aucoin and Jarvis (2004) make a similar point for the situation in Canada.

Demands for greater accountability to redress these and other perceived problems have come from many directions (of which only a few are covered in this book). Parliamentarians have pressed governments for more openness, for greater access to papers or information and have sought answers to detailed parliamentary questions in pursuit of greater accountability. They have insisted, for example, on being able to gain answers from senior officials of arm’s-length bodies and contractors working for government. Local people and representative groups have sought greater accountability and greater influence, for example, over the running of local schools and hospitals, or the siting of mobile phone masts. Human rights organizations have campaigned to hold governments and individuals to account for breaches of international laws, and the media have pursued campaigns for greater accountability and information, for example, about the workings of public bodies or the efficacy of particular drugs.

Governments have responded to demands for greater accountability in many different ways—through increased quantities of performance information, and forms of league tables (showing, for example, how well schools, hospitals, or individual medical consultants are performing), with the introduction of open government and “freedom of information” legislation so that more detail about decisions is available on request, and through inspection regimes to check whether predetermined standards are being upheld. They have also used market type arrangements and subjected privatized bodies to regulation, introduced outsiders—often referred to as non-executives—into the running of public bodies and created parent governors of schools, as well as developed and published citizens’ charters and the minutes of meetings of public bodies. “Whistleblowing” arrangements have been established in many countries, allowing protection to those within organizations wanting to draw attention to perceived abuses.

Another response—and the subject of this book—has been to introduce forms of audit and evaluation—two decidedly different professions with distinctive traditions and philosophies—to play a role in realizing accountability. The argument is that such work will offer transparency, clarity, and assurance about activities, that professional auditors or evaluators—applying a range of expertise and professional judgment—will be able to render impartial, considered accounts of what has been accomplished or not, what has happened (and hopefully why), which will, to a greater or lesser extent, shed light on issues, problems, and possible solutions. New arrangements involving audit are associated with, indeed have often driven, a need for extra “control” (in its double meaning of “checking” plus “steering/managing”) in which oversight of some kind will play a vital role, more or less “compensating for” less clear roles and responsibilities of the actors under scrutiny. Evaluations are more usually a sign of the desire to help improve policies and programs and learn lessons from the experience, although they, too, are required for accountability purposes, for example, as the basis for continued grant funding.

The late 1990s and early years of the twenty-first century are widely associated with the growth in the role of checking and verification. Power (1997), Hood et al. (1999), Gray and Jenkins (2004), and others have charted the growth of the audit society, the “regulatory state” and the “evaluative state” (Neave 1998). Peter van der Knaap’s chapter in this book highlights how performance indicators are being used more and more in policy and budget processes, in this case, in The Netherlands. The interest in evidence-based policymaking in many countries (for example, Cabinet Office, 1999) has provided a new thrust behind evaluation, as has the increasing influence of experts in policy and administration, and the general loss of faith in government’s ability to spend taxes wisely (Lehtonen, 2005). The growth of scrutiny is a striking feature of late twentieth-century bureaucratic life. Audit office budgets have increased (that of the United Kingdom’s National Audit Office by 6 percent per annum in recent years, linked to increased demands on the organization) and their powers extended (for example, in France). Performance measurement has taken off in many areas, with governments setting targets, establishing measurement regimes and reporting practices. Often, as Gray and Jenkins illustrate in their chapter, the use of audit and evaluation have been a response to specific incidents and, on occasions, it seems the most striking evidence possible that “something is being done” is to create a new oversight body. New ways of holding bodies to account are a growth business; there is more information available and more people involved in scrutinizing others.

Despite such trends, as indicated above, this book is designed to explore a central paradox about accountability. On the one hand, there has been an increasing amount of activity (some would say too much) that is accountability-oriented. But at the same time, to listen to many observers, especially in the media and amongst parliamentarians, as well as academic observers and the public, there is less real accountability than ever before. The shortcomings are various. Some see the rendering of accounts as too slow to allow for adequate corrective measures at a tim...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword by Amitai Etzioni
• Part One: Modern-day Accountability: Evaluation and Audit Challenged
• Part Two: The Changing Accountability of the State
• Part Three: New Perspectives on Accountability: Case Studies
• Part Four: Conclusion
• About the Authors
• Index