Ensuring Accountability in Public Administration
Another core value of public administration is accountability. This is a complex concept, and in its narrowest sense, it means holding elected officials accountable for their actions by some kind of external control—that is, political accountability. Reinventing government and the NPS represent two different views of accountability within public administration. Reinventing government emphasizes empowering administrative leaders and executives, giving them the discretion to be creative and innovative in carrying out government policies.
Accountability becomes a matter of satisfying the preferences of individual customers of governmental services. The NPS pays more attention to process and policy, and agencies and officials have to be accountable to citizens, not customers. Differing perceptions of accountability originate from the complex relationship between the values of political and administrative systems. Both reinventing government and CzRM tend to emphasize administrative values and a clear distinction between the political and administrative system.
Public service is seen as a continuation of the political system, and therefore representative of the same basic values. The entrepreneurial paradigm in public administration can have consequences for how we define the basic political values of citizenship, participation, accountability, responsiveness, and democracy in the United States. Thousands of private consultants have developed expertise related to CRM. Whereas the private sector today is influenced by CRM practices, a whole new market is developing for consulting companies when CzRM is disseminated to the public sector.
Government drivers are meeting performance and service goals at the lowest cost to taxpayers, improving quality of service and citizen satisfaction.