Transparency in Public Administration
Introduction
Transparency is a key requirement for public organizations’ reliability and integrity to promote public trust and support. It means that the citizens have an intrinsic right to know the truth about public challenges and that it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that the right is met. In public administration, transparency is the right of the pubic since the people are at liberty to know the details of the steps and actions taken by the various elements of the system. Transparency in public administration induces deep trust in the measures of the systems. For instance, when people find that a public organization’s decisions are forced or exploited, they can seek the details regarding the decisions. Transparency in public administration guarantees legal assurance, and it enhances the level of legitimacy in the decision-making process, which eventually benefits both the organization and the public. The doctrine of transparency in public administration often has a great effect on the mechanism of public administration reform. It fosters the level of efficiency, potency, and alertness as primary elements of good administration concepts. Therefore, this research paper discusses the significance of transparency in public administration, the history of transparency in the USA government, issues of transparency in the government together with the solutions.
Significance of transparency in PA
Transparency is acknowledged as the extent to which the public entities allow external actors to monitor and evaluate their internal workings and performance. Transparency is significant in public administration because it is associated with various benefits, including promoting good governance, increasing efficiency and effectiveness, eliminating corruption, and promoting democracy and accountability. Transparency is a good doctrine of good governance since the extent of clarity and openness about resolutions can assist in establishing the poor and marginalized’s ability to take part in policy formulation and execution to influence the decisions that impact their lives. The engagement of the poor and the marginalized groups in the decision-making process would encourage the decision and policymakers to exercise their authority for the greater good, consequently promoting good governance. Likewise, transparency allows for the execution of public policies through cooperation between the government, market, and civil society. Thus, it assists in the formation and implementation of fair and inclusive policy, which safeguard everyone’s rights and interest in society. This, in turn, promotes good governance within the public entities.
Transparency is also important to PA because it increases efficiency and effectiveness in public administration. Greater transparency can induce both direct and indirect benefits to the government. It helps the government improve its efficiency in allocating resources by ensuring that the benefits of growth are redistributed but not captured by the government’s elites. Furthermore, transparency reform can contribute to significant net savers of public resources and enhanced socioeconomic human and development measures. Besides, transparency is significant to public administration because it helps fight and eliminate corruption within public organizations. The contemporary system of PA is an important part of life. It can be denoted as the more administrative run governed by the officials. The current system of PA has given rise to the executive democracy since the administrative branch cannot be allowed to become the paying tool of corrupt officers of public organizations. Despite executive democracy’s attempt to avert corruption, there is a high eve of corruption in the public administration system. Corruption can only be solved and eliminated if the public is offered the right to access of information. The access of the information in the system would help question the level of corruption in the public organizations, which will considerably help in fighting and eliminating the vice within the public entities. Also, having access to information assists in fighting and controlling corruption in the public office since increasing transparency fosters the risk of spotting corrupt actions, which can deter future dishonesty. Likewise, free and guaranteed access to information allows the public, media, together with law enforcement bodies, to utilize official documentation as a means to unearth cases of dishonesty and maladministration.
Additionally, public transparency is important in public administration since it builds trust within society. Making information available to the public in a more commissioning act helps rebuild trust amidst the citizens and the government, which, in turn, improves the relationship between the government and its citizens. Also, when the local governments are transparent, there is an enhanced level of trust, which will make the citizens feel empowered to take responsibilities that would resultantly promote the growth and development of society. Transparency is also beneficial in public administration since it assists in increasing community engagement in various activities of the government and public institutions.
Background of public administration in the USA government
Transparency is the government’s responsibility to share information with the public to assist in making informed resolutions and make the officials responsible for the conduct of people’s business. From the American federal government’s introduction, Congress has required the executive branch organs to make specific information and records openly available to take actions along with information of the state transparent to the public. Therefore, the background of transparency in the American government traces back to the time when the federal government was initiated following the enactment of the new USA constitution. In 1822, Madison’s letter to William T. Barry explained the need for government transparency. Madison stated that a popular state without information or means of acquiring information is a prologue to a farce or tragedy. Similarly, in the same year, Congress safeguarded other information from being released to the public. Additionally, Congress passed and amended various laws that affect public access to government operations and records. The laws were mainly enacted after the initiation of the federal government, and some of them include but are not limited to the Administrative Procedure Act, FOIA together with the Federal Advisory Committee Statute. The FOIA provides any person the right and liberty to request and access the federal agency records or information, excluding the extent to which the records are safeguarded from disclosure by any of the nine preclusions contained in the statute. The FACA, on the other hand, authorizes the creation of a system controlling the creation and function of the advisory committee in the executive arm of the federal government. The law has promoted transparency in the American government, and it has enabled the government to perform its mandate to the public effectively. Therefore, the background of transparency in the American government dates back to the federal government’s launching, which was followed by the creation of various legislations like FOIA and FACA, which promotes transparency in the government.
Issues with transparency in the American government
There are various issues with clarity in the USA government, and they surround financial transparency and performance transparency. The national government of the USA spends over $ 3.7 trillion annually. Tracking this budget is typically cumbersome since the spending data are usually incomplete or incorrect. The website that currently tracks federal financial expenditure only offers data on how much the state spends on the federal grant and the contracts. For example, in 2012, there were major drawbacks in the information that the USA federal government’s financial database. The federal agencies did not accurately report data on assistance award, which totaled to about $619 in the FY 2012. About 33 out of the 37 bodies with the budget authority of not less than $400 million documented not less than one contract. The remaining four agencies claimed immunity from reporting the use of non-appropriated funds. However, gaps in the Office of Management of Budget guidance make it uncertain whether such immunities are appropriate. Moreover, 451 programs did not make an award subject to the federal financial expenditure website. The agencies failed to submit the information regarding the program after the GAO had informed them about the omission, which lowered the level of transparency in the federal financial expenditure in FY 2012. The officials with the Millennium Challenge Corporation also claimed that they could not report the financial data since the receipts are foreign. Their assertions indicate a lack of transparency since the Office of Management and Budget OBM guideline gives direction on reporting overseas assistance on awards. While OBM has paced mandates on agencies to ensure that there documented data is correct and authenticated by supporting documentation, there has been little effect on the quality of data available on the federal financial expenditure website, which has negatively impacted the transparency of the financial data of the USA. The incomplete and inaccurate data on the website has incapacitated the public to know the exact details and information on the USA’s expenditure, which has led to the loss of trust of the citizens towards the government.
Furthermore, there are issues with performance transparency in the USA. Performance transparency has been an increasingly popular topic in the domestic and global policy circles. It is generally perceived as a response to an immediate crisis, especially scandals. The legal literature of transparency perceived it as a solution to political corruption. Performance transparency is mandated to the principal-agent problem induced by information asymmetries. Corruption is one of the forms of the principal-agent inefficiency that should be mitigated by performance transparency. Nonetheless, performance transparency has failed to combat corruption in the USA government since there are still levels of government corruption. Even though there is a strong respect for the rule of law in the USA, there is still a low level of corruption in the American federal government. Governmental corruption is one exhibition of the principal-agent problem. If the public cannot satisfactorily monitor their political agent or limited recourse to discipline, then the agents’ incentives can be aligned by those of the people. Permitting the government officials to act in secrete without monitoring their performance and action will enable them to have greater incentives for self—dealing at the expense of the people. There is an issue with performance transparency since the information on actions and the USA officials’ performance are not readily available for the public. The lack of performance transparency has consequently encouraged government grants and scandals within the American government.
Likewise, there is an issue with performance transparency within the USA government since those in the government do not make truthful disclosure of their performance. Transparency requires people to make a substantive and truthful performance of their performance. Nonetheless, at times, government officials fail to disclose their performance, which often makes the citizens question their performance transparency. In a democratic government like the USA, there is a principal-agent relationship between the citizens and the government. Citizens generally elect their leaders to manage the government, and the people are entitled to hold them responsible for their performance. The leaders are expected to disclose their information on their performance to the public to determine whether they are performing as per the citizens’ expectations. Nonetheless, after the election, most leaders usually do not disclose information on their performance to the public, making it difficult for the citizens to question their performance since they cannot easily track their leaders’ performance. This eventually makes the citizens question the performance transparency of their leaders.
Solution
The solution to the financial transparency issue id the DATA statute. The DATA Act of 2014 provides the guarantee of enhancing productivity, accuracy, and clarity of the federal financial data once it is fully executed. It requires state-wide reporting on a greater assortment of federal funds together with tracking of the funds at sever locations in the federal expenditure lifecycle. Besides, the law calls for the national government to establish a wide government data standard and locate ways of lowering reporting burdens and frequently scrutiny data standards to help improve transparency and the accountability of the national spending data.