UNIVERSITY OF NUEVA CACERES

City of Naga

ACCOUNTABILITY OF PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM

A course topic on PA 113

Principles, Philosophy and Ethics in Public Administration

Introduction
The classic theories on the Liberal-Democratic State
conceived it as a complex structure of CHECKS AND
BALANCES, addressed mainly at preventing the abuse
of power and at protecting the sphere of freedom and
personal development that corresponds to each
individual and to the society at large. This equilibrium
was inspired by a negative conception of
government and a reductionist philosophy of political
power, the basis of which was in fact the prevention of
its abuse.

Early developments
The state was reduced to basically maintaining law
and order and had very little capacity to directly
intervene in the natural development of social and
economic processes.
Society developed autonomy and only demanded
from the State the keeping of this autonomy.
The economic crisis and the social convulsions
caused the collapse of this system. A new political
system was established.
The state becomes a decisive actor in the social
processes. The old Liberal State becomes now the
Social State, or the Welfare State.

 Society ceases to demand autonomy. Required a

more active and extensive participation of the
State.
The State grew. Public administration was
conceived. Critical analysts called the new system
Bureaucratic State.
Expansion of the welfare state produced its own
crisis. The State experienced dramatic reduction of
its financial capacity and of the societys capacity to
support it.
Strong reaction took place that seeks to reverse
the process that aims at reducing again the
dimension of the state and to increase that of the
society.

 Structure and dynamics of public administration

substantially changed. Reinventing Government
or New Public Management was born, which
tends to follow the principles and managerial
guidelines developed by the private sector.
Citizens were considered more as a CLIENT than
as a subject.
All these changes affect not only the structure and
operation of PA, but also the performance of the
system of CHECKS and BALANCES that
characterised both the Liberal and the Social State
and, among them, the Basic Principle of
Accountability of Public Administration.

The Concept of
Administrative Responsibility

Responsibility
From the point of view of public administration,
Responsibility has mainly three different meanings:
1. Responsibility as CAPACITY
.The ability or the authority of the public
servant to act;
.Implies the existence of a set of laws and
regulations that define the capacity of the
authority of the public official to perform his
or her duties;
.A specific task, or the authority of the
public official.

2. Responsibility as ACCOUNTABILITY
The obligation that public officials have of
providing information, explanations and/or
justifications to a superior authority
internal or external for their performance
in the execution of their functions.
3. Responsibility as LIABILITY
The assumption of the consequences of
ones own acts and, sometimes, also of acts
carried out by the others, when these acts
take place within the field of authority of the
ultimate responsible administrator.
Involves consequences.

Logical Concatenation between the three

dimensions of responsibility:
For an administrative official to be able to give
account for his/her performance (responsibility as
accountability), he/she must be competent or invested
of authority on the subject matter (responsibility as
capacity), and he/she may be considered liable for the
action or omission that took place and its effects or
consequences (responsibility as liability).

As Caiden puts it:

It is highly desirable to have all three terms
conjoined. Public officials, who should take
responsibility for all that is done in the name of
the public (responsibility as capacity), should
also be accountable to external bodies for what
they have done or failed to do while in public
office (responsibility as accountability) and
should be liable, legally and morally, for
correcting
or
compensating
for
their
wrongdoing as judged internally or externally
(responsibility as liability).

The Concept of Accountability

and
Administrative Accountability

1987 Philippine Constitution Article XI Accountability of Public Office

rs

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 everybodys 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
by the Government and, thus, every
government department and agency.
(Royal Commission on Financial
Management and Accountability, 1979)

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)

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.

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
arms 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 quasijudicial 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 peoples
representatives, the elected body, or when it is
directed at stakeholders.

Political Accountability

Constitutional
Decentralized
Consultative

Constitutional

The accountability of a government agency

conferred by the Constitution.
Example (COA):
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.
The devolution of powers to the LGUs thru the Local
Government Code of 1991 implies greater responsibility
and accountability of local governments in how they
make decisions and provide public services to local
constituencies.
Enabled the people to have a role in the process of
governance and help ensure the responsiveness and
accountability of local institutions;
shared accountability for governance:

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 selfregulating 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 arms 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.

Thank you!