Control, publicity and participation
SOME controls stress precise compliance with existing procedures to see that specific tasks are carried out. Other controls are broader, and concerned more with controlling persons and the main trend of their activities.
Techniques of control may involve:
- Prior approval of specific projects.
- Fixing budgetary limits.
- Setting standards of performance.
- Reporting and inspection.
- Approval of key appointments. The most effective type of control is appointment of good people to critical positions.
The problem of control arises as it concerns the relation of departments to their external environment. There are units within the administrative set-up itself that are concerned with boundary control.
Autonomy of departments is also limited in various other ways through common service agencies. There are procedures that departments have to follow in their internal workings.
Though such controls are regarded as limiting a department's autonomy, the relationship involved is complex. Values enforced on government agencies include:
- Economy and efficiency.
- Values embodied policies.
- The common values such as rule of law, honesty and so on.
Important values in promoting control are embodied in politics. Such form of control operates through accountability to ministers and parliament. The doctrine asserts that the public servants should be answerable to elected persons.
Ministers are assisted by special agencies of accountability to assess whether a task has been properly performed. To some, this theory assumes a simple relationship between policy and administration. An efficient, modern administration must have more freedom of decision than fits easily into this account.
Public servants are formally responsible to some ministers. They are also responsive to many other external influences. A minister may formally control his department, but he is also responsive to his public servants.
From one view, a minister is a watchdog over the bureaucracy; from another he may be in league with his own department to repel rival influences.
In practice, the controls on government departments and their officials are highly complex. Among the difficulties are certain interest may be regularly underrepresented and government by compromise can sometimes produce a result that hardly anyone wants.According to some, a sense of responsibility may be promoted by the field controls. They may stress such values as autonomy, self-government of the public service profession, and so on.
To them, responsible bureaucracy of this kind is a separate arm of government, and public servants are the best guardians of public interest and solvers of the public's problems. However, it has to be admitted that professionalism may enhance the listening capacity of the official, but it also increases his distance from the source of the noise.
Within some bureaucratic organisations there may be pressure for more staff participation in management. Such participation has no necessary connection with widening the influence of lower ranking personnel on major decisions.
Broadly speaking, government agencies should be instruments for carrying out policies fed to them from outside through democratically accountable ministers. Outside groups may often claim a right to participate.
There are three different ways of looking at an administrator's relationship with the public:
(i) Public relation, (ii) Publicity, and (iii) Participation.
Public relations is a complex business. A democratic society requires certain attitudes among its administrators (such as disposition to encourage public knowledge). Publicity is making factual information, explanation and argument available. Participation is sharing in formulation of policies and proposals.
A government worries about the image of its public service because,
- It affects recruitment.
- It affects morale.
- It may affect relations between the public service and the political system. Some of the unpopularity of public service is inevitable because it has to reject some proposals, often without time fully to explain its actions. The concepts of neutrality and anonymity are, perhaps, unattractive. Faceless and unacknowledged bureaucratic power stifles initiative and blocks widespread participation.
There are stringent regulations concerning disclosure of official information. Public servants are often loath to give reasons for decisions, as it adds greatly to the burden of the administration. Many public servants do not find it natural or easy to take part in reasoned discussion.
However, it is arguable that, even if ministers and their officials have to be given considerable discretion to do what they think best, they should state fully their reasons for acting as they do.
It has been argued that the public has a right to know, including a right of access to government information and documents (except secret and sensitive matters of foreign affairs and defence).
Some internal processes of public administration should be conducted frankly. Public servants have a right to protect their official comments from public disclosure for a reasonably long period after the decision.
Deciding on the details of government decision-making is a job for experts. Supporters of more participation argue that some particular decisions are within an ordinary person's competence, especially on local matters that affect them.
One must not forget that participation is not a "once-for-all" matter, but one that can be learned. But it needs money and time, and well-staffed machinery for acquainting people with alternative proposals.
The most obvious kind of influence in a modern state comes from organised economic groups. One method of incorporating outside groups into the administrative process is through advisory bodies, which help in linking government agencies with two kinds of knowledge and experience: (a) outside expertise, and (b) the views of people being regulated, or receiving service. Ad-hoc advisory bodies are established to report on a particular matter.
A committee of inquiry is a more usual way of assembling an outside body to report, and is not necessarily evidence that the mind of the government or the minister is not made up. They may simply want outside support.
A.B.M.S. Zahur is a former joint secretary.
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