Accountability (public sector newspeak version) is complexity.

Scrutiny

“Surveyor, in your thoughts you may be reproaching Sordini for not having been prompted by my claim to make inquiries about the matter in other departments. But that would have been wrong, and I want this man cleared of all blame in your thoughts. One of the operating principles of authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity. So Sordini couldn’t inquire in other departments, besides those departments wouldn’t have answered, since they would have noticed right away that he was investigating the possibility of an error.” Franz Kafka, The Castle

Accountability in public services matters and probably matter more than accountability in traded private services. As consumers we do not get much choice in who provides our refuse collection service, our health care, our social services and much else besides - short of migration, that is.

I don't know about you but I've a suspicion that accountability is talked about more and made more complicated than it needs to be, and because of this the extent to which public services - and servants - are accountable is compromised. You only need look at the contortions engaged in by NHS grandees in avoiding personal accountability for services under their direction, to know there's a problem. And just so you know, the same goes for local councils, for the MoD and for services such as prisons and courts.

Part of this lies in the perversion of accountability as a concept. Here's a paragraph from an interview with academic, Toby Lowe, who specialises in public sector management. I present it in two halves so you can appreciate the point I'm making:

True accountability is not about counting but asking people to give an account of their actions as part of a dialogue in which they explain the decisions they have taken in the specific context they are working in.

This is a pretty good description of accountability and something that happens too infrequently and, when it does, very badly. You only need sit in a typical local council scrutiny committee or watch MPs parade their prejudgements at a select committee to appreciate the problem with our process of holding public servants to account for "...the decisions they have taken in the specific context they are working in."

Lowe chooses, however, to complicate the simplicity of "what did you do, give us the basis for that decision, how did you plan to assess whether your decision was right, what was the review process" - straightforward scrutiny - by producing an elaborate and extended further qualification of accountability:

It’s also not just about the traditional hierarchical relationship. There are multiple accountable relationships. Your peers could ask you to account for your decisions, as could a member of the public who is receiving the service – or an ombudsman or professional body. The main thing is that real accountability involves a conversation.

For sure we're broadly accountable in all these ways (to a greater or lesser extent) but the essence of public sector accountability is that services are accountable, through their representatives, to the public. It's not that, in an purely administrative context, there aren't other relationships involving accountability but that if you don't understand how accountability in the relationship with a colleague is less important than accountability to the public you serve then you've missed - and I suspect Toby Lowe has - the whole point of public accountability.

The problem here is that accountability becomes just a management tool - Lowe talks about 'learning' and 'autonomy' but at no point recognises the central requirement that the service is, first and foremost, accountable to the public. The process becomes personal or management development rather than accountability:

The learning element in particular requires a radical rethink. How within an organisation do you create safe spaces for learning and reflection, where people can talk openly about errors and uncertainty with their peers?

Probably a good thing but we need a further step - if we are to base service delivery on greater autonomy (again probably a good thing) then those delivering the service have to "give account of their decisions" in a place and a manner that allows those to whom they are accountable to make a judgement as to the effectiveness, the ethics and the efficiency of those decisions. Simply saying "it's complicated" strikes me as a cop out and merely provides a screen behind which those who should be accountable are able to hide.

We have a variety of problems with public accountability, from the distance between the theoretical decision-makers and the actual service through to the use of appointed boards to oversee provision without providing adequate space for any real scrutiny of the service's ethics, behaviour, decisions, and effectiveness. This is made worse by the conflation between 'accountability' within the decision-making process (to colleagues, managers and so forth) and real accountability to the public. This not only provides cover for politicians but also allows senior management to bury their responsibility and accountability in a confusing and complicated set of management processes.

Accountability is not complicated. In the private sector, if I don't like the service I get from one supermarket, I can complain and get satisfaction or exercise consumer sovereignty - make the supermarket accountable - by taking my shopping elsewhere. We don't get this option with public services and this is doubly true for vulnerable groups like the ill, the disabled and the homeless. And right now the effectiveness or otherwise of these services - their accountability - is either lost to the point of non-existence in Kafkaesque bureaucracy or else is under the direction of badly chaired, poorly briefed and overly partisan political scrutiny processes. Changing this, not creating "safe spaces for learning and reflection", is what we need but that would require political leaderships and senior managers to accept real accountability and the responsibilities that go with it.

.....