Ensuring accountability in the public sector
victoria-university-of-wellington
Fri Jul 06 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Ensuring accountability in the public sector
Friday, 6 July 2007, 2:10 pm
Press Release: Victoria University of Wellington
06 July 2007
Ensuring honour and accountability in the public sector
Politicians and state sector officials need to show more of an inclination to behave honourably in response to public calls for accountability when things go badly wrong, says Associate Professor Bob Gregory from the University's School of Government.
Speaking at the Institute of Public Administration’s annual general meeting recently, Associate Professor Gregory says that unless they do so, especially in the aftermath of human tragedy or national disruption, the public will become increasingly cynical and distrustful towards governmental institutions and processes.
"The state sector is now structured in such a way that the relationship between ministers and top officials is under increasing strain, and both parties are obliged to engage in 'reputation-protecting' and 'blame-shifting' games," he says.
"In the aftermath of Cave Creek, the State Services Commissioner in 1997 reminded chief executives that there could be occasions when public interest would be best served by resignation, even when they themselves were not personally at fault. This stance has strong resonance today, but there's little indication if the message will be heeded."
Entitled Bringing back the Buck: Responsibility and Accountability in Politics and the State Sector, Associate Professor Gregory's keynote speech gave an historic overview of accountability and responsibility in the public sector. He says the assumption that ministerial responsibility has little meaning today is wrong, emphasising that ministerial responsibility is "very much alive and well" and "the most powerful justification for putting the political heat on ministers".
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"There’s never been a golden age of ministerial responsibility, when buck-passing was unknown, and when gentle men and gentlewomen could be relied on to do the right thing.
"What has changed over the past couple of decades is that accountability has become an increasingly difficult issue. Several factors have come together to create a ‘perfect storm’ of obfuscation surrounding accountability."
These factors include: the out-sourcing by way of formal contracts of goods and services to a host of non-governmental or quasi-governmental organisations; the creation of many state agencies at arm’s length from the political executive; and the emergence of informal networks for service delivery and policy formation. Much of this is now called ‘governance’, which many academic commentators think is supplanting bureaucratically-driven ‘government’.
Associate Professor Gregory says this situation is then complicated by enormous work pressures faced by state sector employees, the demise of a unified state sector career service, and the difficulty in indoctrinating key public service values in a highly competitive, job-based system that mirrors the private sector.
ENDS
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