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Holding Agencies Accountable for Efficiency

Learning from Past Failures

North Carolina State University

Despite increasing public concern and dissatisfaction with the efficiency of government bureaucracies, there a refew existing means by which the public can hold agencies accountable for achieving greater efficiency. The accountability process can be viewed in terms of a simple feedback model: setting of standards, comparison of activities against those standards, and imposition of sanctions if the activities fall below standards. In carrying out each of these steps, the citizen as "consumer"of governmental efficiency can either act directly or rely on surrogates. Suggestions for improving accountability mechanisms focused on efficiency are evaluated in terms of the model. Trials of many approaches, such as oversight committees and voucher plans in education, have often had disappointing results because their design failed to separate the "standard-setting and monitoring" role from the "sanction-imposition" role. A lack of consumer information is the single greatest drawback in most proposed accountability systems, and self-conscious government promotion of informational sources (through such means as direct subsidies of nonprofit efficiency monitors) is necessary. Future attempts to improve accountability mechanisms for efficiency should emphasize a combination of surrogate monitoring and direct sanctions.

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