PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY
1987 Philippine Constitution -
Article XI Accountability of Public Officers
» Section 1. Public office is a public trust. Public
officers and employees must, at all times, be
accountable to the people, serve them with
utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty, and
efficiency; act with patriotism and justice,
and lead modest lives.
ACCOUNTABILITY DEFINED
» Accountability implies responsibility and
public trust. The contemporary emphasis is
on everybody’s assuming responsibility and
being accountable.
» The word accountability evokes, to some, a
set of lofty ideals intuitively and eminently
sensible. To others, it is a normal expectation
from anyone entrusted with a responsibility.
ACCOUNTABILITY DEFINED cont.
» Accountability is the obligation to render an
account for a responsibility conferred. It
presumes the existence of at least two
parties: one who allocates responsibility and
one who accepts it with the undertaking to
report upon the manner in which it has been
discharged. (Report of the Independent
Review Committee [Wilson Committee] on
the OAG of Canada, 1975)
ACCOUNTABILITY DEFINED cont.
» Accountability is also frequently linked with
unfortunate outcomes: when things do not
go well, the person who refuses to take the
blame is often criticized for not being
accountable. Curiously, the person who takes
credit for a good deed is not usually
described as being accountable.
ACCOUNTABILITY DEFINED cont.
» Public accountability involves three
interrelated groups: (a) the general public
and particularly the recipients of public
services who are interested in service
providers being accountable to them; (b)
political leaders and supervisors of service
providers to be accountable for a mixture of
public policy and private and parochial
interests; and (c) the service providers
themselves whose objectives and interests
often differ from the first two. (The World
Bank, Governance and Development)
ACCOUNTABILITY DEFINED cont.
» Accountability is the essence of our
democratic form of government. It is the
liability assumed by all those who exercise
authority to account for the manner in which
they have fulfilled responsibilities entrusted
to them, a liability ultimately to the people
owed by Parliament, by the Government and,
thus, every government department and
agency. (Royal Commission on Financial
Management and Accountability, 1979)
ACCOUNTABILITY DEFINED cont.
» Accountability is the essence of our
democratic form of government. It is the
liability assumed by all those who exercise
authority to account for the manner in which
they have fulfilled responsibilities entrusted
to them, a liability ultimately to the people
owed by Parliament, by the Government and,
thus, every government department and
agency. (Royal Commission on Financial
Management and Accountability, 1979)
ACCOUNTABILITY DEFINED cont.
» The Theory of Parliamentary accountability,
in essence, is ministerial responsibility, which
means that each minister is responsible to
Parliament for the conduct of his
Department. The act of every civil servant is
by convention regarded as the act of his
minister. (C.E.S. Franks, The Parliament, 227).
» Accountability involves an obligation to
explain or justify specific actions. (David
Heald, Public Expenditure, 1984, 154)
ACCOUNTABILITY DEFINED cont.
» Accountability is a political principle
according to which agencies or organizations,
such as those in government, are subject to
some form of external control, causing them
to give a general accounting of and for their
actions; an essential concept in democratic
public administration. (Gordon, Public
Administration, 607)
ACCOUNTABILITY DEFINED cont.
» Accountability is a synonym for responsibility.
It is a type of relationship that comes to
existence when an obligation is taken on by
an individual (or entity), such as the
responsibility to assume a role or discharge a
task.(Timothy W. Plumptre, Beyond the
Bottomline, Management in Government,
1988, 182)
ACCOUNTABILITY DEFINED cont.
» The concept of accountability is sometimes
taken as merely another name for
stewardship accounting . . . Stewardship is
the obligation to report on safe custody or
proper disposition of assets entrusted. . . The
term accountability, in contrast, focuses
attention on identification of those parties
entitled to an accounting and the purposes
for which they are presumed to use the
accounting. (Skinner, Accounting Standards,
636)
ACCOUNTABILITY DEFINED cont.
» Accountability is the obligation of a deputy minister
to answer to a person or group for the exercise of
responsibilities conferred on him or her by that
person or group. . . Management responsibility is
the requirement for the deputy ministers to
respond to the concerns of individuals or groups
within the overall context of their accountability
obligations . . . Answerability is the obligation of
deputy ministers to provide information and
explanation to Parliament on behalf of the ministers
and the government. (Gordon F. Osbaldeston.
Keeping Deputy Ministers Accountable, 1989, 5-6)
INDIVIDUAL VERSUS INSTITUTIONAL
ACCOUNTABILITY
» Some people argue that it is the institution as
a whole that should be held responsible, not
the individual. Conventional wisdom has it,
however, that in the final analysis only
individuals can be made responsible and
accountable because only they are entrusted
with specific responsibilities. If an institution
is not as accountable as it should be, it is
because the individual or individuals in charge
prevent it from being so. That debate has
never been entirely resolved in a convincing
manner.
OBJECTIVE ACCOUNTABILITY VERSUS
SUBJECTIVE ACCOUNTABILITY
» In objective accountability, someone is
responsible for something and accountable to
some person or body in a formal way,
through clearly defined rules and
mechanisms.
» In subjective accountability, a person feels a duty
towards the profession of public service or a
sense of the public good and the nation which
determines and defines conduct even though
there are no formal mechanisms through which
the accountability can be enforced.
EXTERNAL INDUCEMENT FOR
ACCOUNTABILITY
» Accountability often does not come easily;
not everybody has the proper attitude, or a
natural disposition reinforced by a strong set
of personal values or ethics. Sometimes,
accountability is legislated, and sometimes it
is promulgated as an institutional value and
becomes a managerial policy. Often,
accountability remains merely an
exhortation.
EXTERNAL INDUCEMENT FOR
ACCOUNTABILITY cont.
» Where there is an insufficient natural
disposition for accountability, for assumption
of responsibility, or for a rendering of account,
an external pressure becomes necessary. It
may take the form of legislation that is quite
specific. Or it may be a social pressure, quite
general and ill-focused. Sometimes, the
pressure takes the form of rewards and
punishment. There is a widespread belief that
such a regime is sound and appropriate and
that many people humanely react to it.
Nevertheless, it has limitations.
EXTERNAL INDUCEMENT FOR
ACCOUNTABILITY cont.
» Depending on people’s cultural backgrounds
and the values that inspire them, reactions to
external inducement vary.
THE ENVIRONMENT FOR ACCOUNTABILITY
» A number of factors must be present for
accountability to be effective; it has to rest on
a solid psychological foundation. In proximity
to accountability reside ethics, morality, and
codes of conduct, all serving to compensate
for obscure accountability links or to
reinforce them. Fully informed and morally fit
people are able to make highly defensible
decisions and naturally feel responsible and
are accountable.
THE ENVIRONMENT FOR ACCOUNTABILITY
cont.
» Having a proper attitude, a healthy
disposition towards accountability is not
sufficient. It requires a technical structure,
one that is organizationally sound.
AUTONOMY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
» Certain institutional arrangements, particularly in
government, have conferred a status of independence
or autonomy to particular agencies that have to be
managed free of political interference, or dealt with at
arm’s length, given the politically sensitive nature of
their activities. There are many such agencies: the
central banking authority, the state broadcasting
system, grant-giving agencies, regulatory and quasi-
judicial agencies, and so on. They are placed at a
deliberate distance from the very body – Congress or
the government that created them. This autonomous
status should not exempt them from being
accountable, although some would argue that to
make them directly accountable to the body that
created them is to invite interference.
DIMENSIONS OF ACCOUNTABILITY
> Internal and
> External Accountability
Internal
» a rendering of account from the lowest
echelons to the top, in a hierarchy. Objectives
are defined at the top and transmitted to lower
levels for execution. Authority is delegated
accordingly, followed later by the rendering of
account and possibly the application of a
reward system. Within a government structure,
for instance, the rendering of account would
take place at successive echelons up to the
deputy minister/secretary. In turn, the latter
would be accountable to the minister/Secretary
responsible for that particular department.
Generally, this internal accountability is not
public; it remains within management.
External
» a rendering of account by management to
their governing bodies. This rendering of
account is public when it takes place, for
instance, at the assembly of the people’s
representatives, the elected body, or when it
is directed at stakeholders.
Polical Accountability
» Constitutional
» Decentralized
» Consultative
Constitutional
» the accountability of a government agency
conferred by the Constitution. Example:
» Section 4, Art. IX-D, Phil Const. The Commission shall
submit to the President and the Congress, within the
time fixed by law, an annual report covering the
financial condition and operation of the Government,
its subdivisions, agencies, and instrumentalities,
including government-owned or controlled
corporations, and non-governmental entities subject
to its audit, and recommend measures necessary to
improve their effectiveness and efficiency. It shall
submit such other reports as may be required by law.
Decentralized
» the establishment of local government units,
regional offices as a response to the
overloads in a central or a provincial
government engenders a dispersion of
accountability and possible conflicts between
the central and the locality.
Consultative
» representative democracy is supplemented
by participatory democracy. Elected
representative feel obligated to consult the
population; they have a close rapport with
special interest groups and even feel a certain
accountability to them. The accountability
relationships are not very clear in such
circumstances.
Consultative
» representative democracy is supplemented
by participatory democracy. Elected
representative feel obligated to consult the
population; they have a close rapport with
special interest groups and even feel a certain
accountability to them. The accountability
relationships are not very clear in such
circumstances.
Managerial Accountability
» Commercial
» Resource
» Professional
Commercial
» when government services are financed by
user fees rather than by budget
appropriations, they may be judged as much,
if not more on their commercial performance
as on the attainment of their public policy
purposes. The framework of accountability
of many GFIs, GOCCs and water districts
would assume this character.
Resource
» accountability for resources is typically
indicated for nonmarket provision of services.
Budget control framework must ensure
efficiency and be capable of evaluating
management performance. Resource
accountability can be divided into:
Resource cont.
financial-management accountability framework
human resources accountability framework
asset-management accountability framework
» The human resources component within the context
of an administration at the service of a representative
government agency takes on a special dimension.
Merit is the principle of competence, and the so-called
merit system characteristic of our public service has
some definite implications on accountability for
human resources.
Resource cont.
ARTICLE IX
B. THE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION
Section 2
» (2) Appointments in the civil service shall be
made only according to merit and fitness to
be determined, as far as practicable, and,
except to positions which are policy-
determining, primarily confidential, or highly
technical, by competitive examination
Professional
» the allocation of resources in a public
institution is often largely influenced, when
not decided, by professionals who owe their
standards to a self-regulating body.
Legal Accountability
» Judicial
» Quasi-judicial
» Regulatory
Judicial
» the government allows reviews of public
servants’ actions through judicial review of
cases brought by aggrieved citizens.
Quasi-judicial
» largely in the form of recourse with respect to
application of the law where a great deal of
administrative discretion is prevalent because
of the necessity to operate at arm’s length
from politics. A specialized tribunal like the
Court of Tax Appeals and the CP of the COA,
CSC, COMELEC are examples of entities
operating within a quasi-judicial framework
of accountability.
Regulatory
» some regulatory agencies (ex. HLURB, PRC)
operate with a large degree of independence,
applying broad legislative mandates affecting
the individual interests of citizens by
rendering administrative decisions free of
political interference. This is possibly one of
the most complex accountability situations.
Procedural and Consequential Accountability
» Procedural
» Consequential
Procedural
» in the sense that if all the requirements with
regards to inputs are satisfied, the output, or
the intended outcomes, or results are
deemed assured. Emphasis is on the
management procedures, practices and
systems, as well as on compliance to rules
and regulations.
Consequential
» the most significant signals emanate from the
monitoring of the output to determine if
intended goals have been attained,
presumably as a result of the efforts that
went into the initiative. Outputs may not all
lend themselves to retracing the
corresponding inputs. The emphasis is on
results, eventual outcomes, impacts, and
constitutes an enlargement of the scope of
accountability into what is called
effectiveness.
THE END
