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Report 6 - Access to Information Review Task Force
PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION
Published: November 2001
Table of Contents
Introduction
Section 1 - What is Accountability?
1.1 Will the real accountability
please stand up?
1.2 Accountability is different from responsibility,
responsiveness and transparency
1.3 The four components
1.4 What is the purpose of accountability?
Section 2 - Trends in Public Administration
2.1 Changes
in the public sector
2.2 New Public Management
Section 3 - Accountability
and the Access to Information Process
3.1 What
does access to information mean for accountability?
3.2 What are the aims of the Access
to Information Act?
3.3 What is the problem with access
to information?
Introduction
Accountability is expected in the public sector. A legislated right of access to information held by government is generally held to be one of the pillars of accountable government. But what exactly is accountability? It is a term that is thrown around loosely, often interchangeably with other terms that do not mean the same thing, such as responsibility, liability, answerability, culpability and responsiveness. Accountability can be understood as answerability for performance or the process of holding someone answerable for performance. This, however, is a narrow concept of accountability. It is actually much more complicated and multi-dimensional.
The right of access to information is not the only means to ensure accountability in government. Among others, departmental reports to Parliament, appearances of ministers and officials before Parliamentary committees, audit, evaluation and compliance reports, reports of official watch dogs such as the Auditor General and the Information Commissioner are part of the elaborate accountability framework of the public sector. Nor is the release of material under the Access to Information Act the main method for the government to ensure the free flow of information to citizens. Section 2 of the legislation makes very clear that the "Act is intended to complement and not replace existing procedures for access to government information". For example, we are seeing more and more government data available 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the world wide web.
This paper seeks to explain what is meant by accountability and to show how the concept should operate in relation to access to information. It is important to place the issue of the provision of information to the public and the issue of protecting the public's right to know within the context of the wider debate over the changing nature of accountability.
This paper will show that it is widely accepted now that the concept
of accountability is extremely varied and multifaceted compared to the
relatively narrow concept that underpinned the Act in its origin
in Canada in the 1980's. This paper is a synthesis of the leading material
on the subject of accountability and access to information, as well as
some broad conclusions drawn from an analysis of the literature.
Return to table of Contents
Section 1 - What is Accountability?
1.1 Will the real accountability please
stand up?
To be accountable in the public sector today is more complicated and dynamic than common sense and intuition might suggest. Sometimes the complication arises from the difference between formal objectives versus informal, subjective responsibility. In popular usage there is a tendency to conflate the terms "accountability" and "responsibility" in a misleading way.
The subject of accountability in the public sector and its true meaning has been the subject of debate for decades in Canada and other western democracies. "There are many questions surrounding accountability, and as we will see, there are very few straightforward answers." (1) The following is a synopsis of the varying opinions of its meaning. What becomes clear is that accountability in the public sector does not have universal meaning. It is layered and multi-dimensional for many reasons, one of which is the ad hoc, improvised nature of the reforms put in place by governments supposedly to strengthen accountability. As new problems have arisen, new types of accountability requirements have been implemented as supplements to, rather than replacements for, traditional approaches.
"Since the concept of accountability is multifaceted in meaning and often difficult to discern in practice, a comprehensive and universally accepted definition has yet to emerge." (2) Accountability should be distinguished from other words that have mistakenly been used interchangeably, such as responsiveness, responsibility, answerability, liability and transparency. Most of these concepts have some relevance to access to information.
A common definition of accountability is 'answerability for performance or the process of holding someone answerable for performance'. Schafer states that what is usually meant by accountability is that one person is open to the imposition of a duty to give an account. "In other words, in certain contexts, the duty sense of "responsibility" corresponds to the notion of accountability." (3) When someone within an organization is assigned responsibility to perform a certain task, along with the authority and resources to carry it out, they become accountable or answerable to the individual or institution who authorized the activity.
It is fair to say that accountability has been the driving force behind access to information legislation in Canada. The process to introduce access legislation was initially sparked by the belief that stronger accountability mechanisms were required in government and promoting the Act in the 1980's was all about accountability. It is only recently that the additional purposes set out in the 1977 Green Paper have been recognized as being important, such as increasing public understanding, enhancing learning, creating a more open and responsive government and supporting knowledge generation for all of Canadian society.
According to the 1977 Government's Green Paper on Public Access to Government
Documents, the purpose of the legislation was three fold:
- Effective accountability - depends on knowing the information and
options available to the decision-makers. Assessment of government depends
upon a full understanding of the context within which decisions are
made.
- Government documents often contain information vital to the effective
participation of citizens and organizations in the making of public
decisions in which they are interested.
- Government has become the most important single institutional repository of information about our society, its political, economic, social and environmental problems. In some areas, it is virtually the only significant source of information. Since such information is developed at public expense, it ought to be publicly available. (4)
Hence access to information was meant to serve a broader and more constructive
purpose than strict accountability and accountability itself must be used
as a learning tool.
Return to table of Contents
1.2 Accountability is different from responsibility,
responsiveness and transparency
Accountability is frequently used interchangeably with responsibility, but the two are actually different. Gregory cites Uhr's distinction between the two: "Accountability is about compliance with authority, whereas responsibility is about empowerment and independence. Accountability is the negative end of the same band in which responsibility is the positive end. If accountability is about minimising misgovernment, responsibility is about maximising good government." (5)
Accountability is more about compliance and following rules and regulations and is often assimilated with "blaming", while responsibility espouses a more positive value. That being said, there are not always practical differences in their impact. The Access to Information Act relies on both responsibility and accountability. On the one hand, the Act requires public servants to conform to its provisions, and it can be used for "exposing" wrongdoing or highlighting areas of conflict within government, thereby serving the value of accountability.
At the heart of the Act is also the promotion of the intrinsic good for governments of acting responsibly: in an open and transparent way. Thomas describes responsibility as "a self-imposed duty to do what is right based on prevailing standards and/or individual's sense of moral and ethical obligation." As mentioned earlier, responsibility has a more informal and subjective nature than accountability.
Acting responsibly and being held accountable can increase the responsiveness of different parts of government. Responsiveness involves both the capacity and the inclination to address the needs of individuals, groups, or society at large. Responsiveness may exist without a formal authority relationship. That is not to say, however, that a subjective sense of responsibility and the need to be responsive is less powerful than formal accountability requirements in terms of shaping behavior. Being responsive is recognizing stakeholders needs and addressing them by providing appropriate services and programs. Thomas defines responsiveness as "responding readily and sympathetically to some request or signal from an outside source." (6)
Governments are expected to be responsive to the various interests within a pluralistic society. The public service must be responsive to a variety of sources - the Cabinet, Parliament, the clients for their programs, other governments, and society at large. Openness of decision-making in government encourages and supports responsiveness. Alternatively, responsiveness may in practice be limited by a number of factors, including the resources available, the volume and intensity of pressure on the public sector agency and the sense of relative importance the agency places on the different demands for responsivess.
Transparency is another term that gets confused with accountability. Gregory defines transparency as greater openness and specificity of governmental activity, transactions, and information. (7) Based on this definition, there has been a large and significant increase in transparency in government organizations in the last few years, due in part to their ability to provide a wide and vast amount of information on the Internet.
The Access to Information Act may encourage people to act responsibly,
but the accountability usually comes after the decision or action, or
after the error or wrongdoing. The aim should be to prevent possible errors
and misdeeds by reinforcing and galvanizing norms of responsible behavior
by both politicians and public servants. Minister Francis Fox testifying
on Bill C-43 (later the Access to Information Act) before the
Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs in 1973 argued that:
The statutory framework for access to information will constitute a significant development for our political institutions. It will create opportunities for a more informed dialogue between public leaders and citizens. It will improve the nature of government decision-making by allowing a greater input from the private sector. Finally, it will impose on Ministers and officials a greater degree of accountability and of responsibility for their actions and their decisions.
1.3 The four components
There are four main components involved in any type of accountability
relationship:
- the assignment or negotiation of responsibilities;
- the obligation or duty to report on performance;
- monitoring of the performance by someone else; and
- a consequence for behavior (either positive or negative).
Accountability involves expectations, control and the resources necessary to fulfill assigned responsibilities. It is unfair to hold institutions or individuals accountable if they do not control the relevant decisions and actions required to carry out an assigned responsibility. There is seldom complete control, but the accountable parties must be able to control the outcome to a significant degree. This means they must be given adequate authority and resources to fulfill their responsibilities.
There is potential in any given situation for several types of accountability requirements to exist and they need not necessarily clash. In fact they can mutually support one another. In the worst case scenario, however, there can be competing accountability criteria and processes. For example, the Auditor General promotes efficiency, while the Information Commissioner promotes access to information. Being open and responsive could be seen as detracting or impairing narrowly defined efficiency. In any accountability relationship, several forms of accountability may be concurrent, over-lapping and working together (or, in some instances, against each other). "The result has been to create confusion among public servants about what it means to behave responsibly and to whom they should feel accountable." (8)
Too often the third component is overlooked as a requirement for a successful accountability relationship. Ministers are ultimately accountable for the administration of the Access to Information Act within their departments. They usually delegate many, if not all, of their responsibilities under the Act, so they need to monitor their departments to ensure they comply with the rules and the spirit of the Access to Information Act. They will rely on their Deputy Ministers to also monitor compliance to assure themselves periodically that the process is working as it is meant to. Parliament also has a duty to monitor the operations of the Act and it has annual reports from the Information Commissioner and from each government institution to assist it with this task.
Even with all the different types of accountability relationships, and
the components of the different types, there will never be enough accountability
capacity to provide scrutiny of the full range of public sector activities.
Hence, we rely greatly on public servants' internalized sense of doing
what is right. A strategic approach to accountability will build on and
get maximum leverage from this internalized sense of doing what is right.
Return to table of Contents
1.4 What is the purpose of accountability?
Accountability has been referred to as a "cornerstone of public governance
and management", and "the heart of governance within democratic societies."
(9) But what purpose does it serve? Aucoin and Heintzman argue
that the answer is threefold:
The first is to control for the abuse and misuse of pubic authority. The second is to provide assurance in respect to the use of public resources and adherence to the law and public service values. The third is to encourage and promote learning in pursuit of continuous improvement in governance and public management. (10)
These three purposes are strikingly similar to those of access to information. The control aspect may be the most recognized form of accountability. "[It] lies at the heart of democratic accountability in all major constitutional models because each, in its own way, seeks to ensure that the authoritative and coercive powers of the state are not abused or misused." (11)
Traditionally, the control aspect was thought to be the most important purpose for the existence of accountability relationships. It could be argued, however, that the real reason we need accountability is because we need to learn from our mistakes. Without active disclosure of information and strong accountability in the public sector, it is possible that the same mistakes could happen time and time again, without the benefit of organizational learning and promotion of institutional memory.
Return to table of Contents
Next Page 
Footnotes:
1. Thomas, Paul G., (1998) The Changing Nature of Accountability in Taking Stock: Assessing Public Sector Reforms, (eds.) B. Guy Peters and Donald J. Savoie, Canadian Centre for Management Development. p. 351.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Government of Canada, (1977) Green Paper: Legislation on Public Access to Government Documents, Ottawa.
5. Gregory, Robert, (Forthcoming) "Accountability" in The Handbook of Public Administration (Sage) 2001.
6. Thomas, (1998) p. 355.
7. Ibid.
8. Thomas, Paul G., (1997) Ministerial Responsibility and Administrative Accountability in New Public Management and Public Administration in Canada, (eds.) Mohamed Charih and Arthur Daniels, The Institute of Public Administration of Canada, p. 150.
9. Aucoin, Peter and Heintzman, Ralph, (2000) "The dialectics of accountability for performance in public management reform." International Review of Administrative Sciences, vol. 66, no. 1, March, pp. 45-56; Thomas, (1998) p. 348.
10. Aucoin and Heintzman, (2000) p. 45.
11. Ibid. p. 47.
