Abstract

This article deals with the question of how to transform the public sector in Asia towards transparency and accountability. What are the main challenges and constraints in promoting transparency and accountability? What kind of strategies can we suggest to enhance and sustain transparency and accountability? It will start with the introduction, including environmental changes in public affairs, and a brief overview of transparency and accountability. Then it will look at what major challenges and constraints there are in enhancing transparency and accountability. This will be followed by a discussion of key strategies for the transformation and sustainability of transparency and accountability for further development in the Asian public sector.

A DAUNTING TASK IN ASIA

The move for transparency and accountability in the Asian public sector
Pan Suk Kim
Pan Suk Kim Director and Professor Institute for Regional Studies and Development College of Government and Business Yonsei University Wonju Campus, Wonju 220-710 South Korea E-mail: pankim@gmail.com

Key words
Accountability, Asian public sector, corruption, ethics, governance, transparency

Vol. 10 Issue 4 2008 527537 Public Management Review ISSN 1471-9037 print/ISSN 1471-9045 online 2008 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/14719030802263962

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INTRODUCTION Asia is made up of a very diverse group of countries, in many different regions. Northern Asia includes Russia, Central Asia includes Kazakhstan and others, Western Asia includes Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, Southern Asia includes India, Pakistan and others, Southeast Asia includes Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines and others. Eastern Asia includes China, Japan, South Korea and others. Each area in Asia is unique, from region to region, and country to country, so that it is hard to generalize about an overall situation in terms of public administration. In an era of evolving public administration, building good governance is a key issue for modern public administration around the world. However, each countrys paradigm shift in public administration is on a different path and stage. Some countries are approaching the governance paradigm, but many countries in Asia are still in the traditional public administration model. The New Public Governance or Responsive Governance is a new direction for further development (UN/DESA 2005: 7; Osborne 2006: 383), but it might be pie in the sky to the substantially underdeveloped countries. Therefore, a question of how to build up good governance is a daunting task for many Asian countries. Almost every Asian nations government uses attractive political rhetoric such as good governance or democratic governance, but there are still substantial gaps between the rhetoric and the realities in many Asian countries. Major characteristics of good governance have been increasingly emphasized in the public sector: transparency, accountability, participation, responsiveness, inclusion, consensus building, in addition to the rule of law and three Es (efciency, effectiveness and equity). In Asian countries, however, one of the most common problems or serious challenges for further development is the lack of transparency and accountability in the eld of public administration and public policy; particularly when compared with advanced western countries. According to a study by Kaufmann and his associates (2007), Asias governance indicator on voice and accountability is much less than OECD countries. In particular, the governance indicator on voice and accountability in South Asia and the Middle East is not only less than OECD countries but also less than the Caribbean, Eastern European and Latin American countries (Kaufman et al. 2007), as shown in Table 1. Through the globalization and the information revolution, people have come to expect more transparency and more accountability. However, as Transparency International (TI) demonstrates in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), many countries still have a lot of problems with corruption specically linked to a lack of transparency and a lack of accountability. With the exception of Singapore (9.3), Hong Kong (8.3) and Japan (7.5), many Asian countries have a relatively low CPI scores. It is generally considered that where scores are below 3 corruption is uncontrolled or rampant. Countries with a score below 3 are: Vietnam (2.6), Timor-Leste (2.6), Nepal (2.5), the Philippines (2.5), Yemen (2.5), Libya (2.5), Iran (2.5), Pakistan (2.4), Syria (2.4), Indonesia (2.3), Bangladesh (2.0), Cambodia (2.0), Laos (1.9), Afghanistan (1.8), Iraq (1.5), Myanmar (1.4) (Transparency International 2007).

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Table 1: Comparison of the governance indicators on voice and accountability Region (average) OECD Caribbean Eastern Europe and Baltics Latin America East Asia Middle East and North Africa South Asia Former Soviet Union
Source: Kaufman et al. (2007).

Percentile rank (0100) 90.6 67.7 65.3 51.6 49.4 26.2 25.5 21.3

In comparison, the top scores of advanced countries and territories reect their relatively clean public sectors, enabled by public stability, well established legal frameworks such as conict of interest and freedom of information regulations and a civil society free to exercise an overseeing role in politics and the public sector. However, public governance in Asian countries, although it has been consistently improved over time, is still much weaker than in the advanced western world. Accordingly, many Asian countries have a common desire for further development: how to catch up with advanced countries? Thus, Asian countries need to substantially improve transparency and accountability in the public sector. A BRIEF OVERVEIW OF TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY Transparency is an essential issue for democratic decision making. Since transparency has several aspects of meanings, the main aspects of transparency are: clarity; accessibility; integration; logic; and rationality. Citizens must have fair access to information so that they can participate meaningfully in the public decision-making process. There are a number of stages or levels of transparency reforms possible in government. A fundamental level could be transparency as representative government with the emphasis on government legitimacy. In the developing world, although the principles and processes of democratization have been introduced, the realization of transparency and accountability has been greatly constrained due to various forms of social divides based on class, caste and gender (Haque 2008). The next level of transparency is reached when transparency is used to judge the distribution of policy benets with an emphasis on service delivery. A still higher level of transparency is achieved when transparency responds to maladministration or malpractice; here the emphasis is on eradicating corruption. The next upward level is for transparency to be a tool for enhancing accountability, with the emphasis on information and decision-making

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disclosures. The pinnacle of transparency is reached with open government and an emphasis on electronic democracy and transparent governance (Otenyo and Lind 2004). Thus there are a number of steps or phases for transparency reform in government. In addition to a question of transparency, what is accountability? The concept of accountability has been characterized as expansive (Mulgan 2000) and chameleon-like (Sinclair 1995) as applied in both theory and practice (Dubnick 2003). The main aspects of accountability are: transparency; liability; controllability; responsibility; and responsiveness (Koppell 2005). Several questions can be raised for the determination of transparency asking whether: (1) the organization revealed the facts of its performance (for transparency); (2) the organization faced the consequences for its performance (for liability); (3) the organization did what the principal (Congress, the President, Prime Minister, etc.) desired (for controllability); (4) the organization followed (complied with) the rules and regulations (for responsibility); and (5) the organization fullled the substantive expectation according to demand/need (for responsiveness). Accountability, therefore, is not just a simple concept but reects many different elements: political; administrative; judicial; professional; and market accountabilities (Hupe and Hill 2007). MAJOR CHALLENGES AND CONSTRAINTS IN ENHANCING TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY The public sector is responsible for promoting public transparency and accountability, but there are many challenges in doing so. One of the most serious challenges might be the lack of transformational leadership and political will in many developing countries. In Asian countries, there has been a lack of exemplary leadership in modern history, as these countries have often ended up with dictatorships, authoritarian regimes, etc. Also many leaders have had low commitment in promoting democratic governance such as transparency and accountability. In some countries where there is a high degree of poverty and low social economic status, there is cynicism, fatalism and a lack of can-do spirit. They often have a, nothing we can do attitude and a lack of self-esteem. If this is the reality, it is extremely difcult to generate or promote the culture of performance or the culture of responsibility. In some countries, an elite capture culture is a serious problem; ofcials have a Mandarin mindset in some countries. In other words, they believe that they are the best and the brightest. In theory they are civil servants, but, in reality, they behave like civil masters. This kind of domination phenomena is also one of the stumbling blocks in promoting democratic governance including transparency and accountability. A lack of social capital is another serious problem in many developing Asian countries. Problems include: a low level of trust or condence; low participation; low inclusion; lack of pro-activity; low or poor public values/norms; and a lack of diversity in the public sector. In terms of overall composition of population in Asia, there is often a substantial degree of diversity but this is not always reected in the public workforce,

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particularly in the higher levels of the public service where there is a lack of ethnic or cultural diversity (Haque 2008). Managing diversity is not a simple matter to carry out, but diversity must be actively promoted together with a sense of belonging, a sense of commitment, a sense of equal ownership. All of these are often lacking in Asia and are needed to build up social capital in the public sector. Yet another problem might be inappropriate organizational structures and institutions to improve transparency and accountability. Structures are sometimes not suitable, or not focused, and the organizations goals are not clear, structures may be out-dated, and institutions are overlapping in terms of duties and responsibilities. Other problems include: a lack of co-ordination; a conict of objectives and inappropriate systems and procedures; ill designed systems; and very rigid procedures, poor systems and severe red tape, selective enforcement, a lack of operational guidelines and so on. The list of problems is large. On top of these, there are problems associated with underdeveloped administrative software in many Asian countries. In the Philippines, for example, more accountability measures including value-for-money audits have been introduced at the administrative level, but such measures have concentrated on nancially suspicious transactions and are not incorporated into the civil service system as a means of regular program assessment (Carino 2008). Incentive systems should be well institutionalized in the Asian public sector. The lack of incentives in the public sector includes poor compensation and a disparity with the private sector, which is problematic for promoting public ofcials performance and integrity. Low salary does not always lead inevitably to corruption, nor is it justication for corruption or low performance, but human nature is such that there is a likelihood of this resulting. A lack of an effective performance evaluation system is another problem. If he/she performs well, there must be positive consequences or rewards. KEY STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE AND SUSTAIN TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY In terms of strategies to transform to, and sustain, transparency and accountability, it is necessary to discuss pertinent issues in two different dimensions: (1) a broad higher level dimension, the socio-political level which is related to broadly dened areas such as political reform and legal reform; and (2) the managerial level, which is more related to managerial issues in the eld of public affairs. The socio-political level In looking at the socio-political level, rst there is a need to improve sectoral governance. There needs to be an improved interaction of the stakeholders, particularly in a broad higher level. Grand reform is urgently required in many Asian countries to

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reform not only the executive branch, but also the legislative branch, as well as the judiciary branch. Therefore, political reform must be carried out in many areas: electoral system and processes; campaigning nances; political nominations; political appointments; congressional affairs; and political party systems. In addition, reform of the judiciary is necessary because the judiciary is relatively weaker than the executive branch in many Asian countries. For example, Bangladesh formally declared its judiciary free from executive control on 1 November 2007 as part of legal reforms aimed at ensuring justice for all (Reuters 2007). Bangladeshs judiciary had been notorious for political interference and rampant corruption for many years, but the new change will become a milestone in establishing the rule of law and justice in Bangladesh. Since the media is often regarded as a fourth branch, it should also be modernized. Media reform should be pro-active; in other words investigative journalism must be profoundly embedded in society. If media are simply copying what the Government says, then journalism will hardly get public trust or condence. Accordingly, investigative journalism is urgently required in many developing countries. The near absence of investigative journalism stems from a lack of professionalism or a desire for accuracy (de Burgh 2000; Gaines 2007). Also the business sector, as a key element in sectoral governance, must be innovated; the market sometimes has imperfections that lead to market failure and corruption. Policy recommendations to combat corruption in the private sector would be to: (1) involve various stakeholders in the anti-corruption process to build public understanding of the costs of corruption and support for the needed reforms; (2) help create and commit to internationally accepted accounting standards; (3) develop good standards of corporate governance; (4) promote clear rules on conict of interest; and (5) establish clear guidelines on standards by which government agencies award subsidies and exemptions from nes, tariffs and taxes (Sullivan and Shkolnikov 2004). In corruption, there are corrupters and corruptees so that behaviors of both parties need to be corrected. Furthermore, the role of civil society needs revitalizing; the public sector partnering with civil society is an essential strategy for many countries seeking to strengthen the transparency and accountability of governance. There needs to be more monitoring and overseeing by civil society. The role of watchdog organizations needs to be vitalized. There needs to be more citizen engagements, more active participation, more civic education, and to bring more social issues into public agendas, through public awareness programs. The academic and research communities must also play their part by providing more innovative ideas for society. Anticorruption and national freedom of information laws need to be promulgated in many countries. The development of democracy and a desire to combat corruption have led to an explosion over the last decade in the enactment of public laws allowing citizens to gain access to public records around the world. In addition to anticorruption laws, many countries have enacted freedom of information laws worldwide with such measures aimed at encouraging transparency in government. In South Korea, for

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example, the Act on Disclosure of Information by Public Agencies was enacted in 1996 and went into effect in January 1998. In Japan, the Law Concerning Access to Information Held by Administrative Organs was approved by the Diet in May 1999 and went into effect in April 2001. In India, the Right to Information Act was approved by the Parliament in May 2005 and signed by the President in June 2005 (Banisar 2006). However, many Asian countries still do not have such national laws (Privacy International 2006). In order to implement a broad range of reform measures, the strong political will of the President or the Prime Minister (depending upon a countrys political system) is necessary, but the head of the State often lacks such commitment. In this case alternative action needs to be taken to create or trigger political will of top political leaders. Waiting patiently for politicians to commit political will is not a realistic option. A politician might be facing so many competing agendas every day: national economy; poverty; crisis; disaster and so on. Thus, unless a large number of citizens, social groups and/or the media strongly demand change for government reform or public service reform including transparency and accountability issues, there is little chance of the politician paying serious attention to these matters. Accordingly, civic leaders may need to utilize more strategic approaches in order to bring sociopolitical attention to political leaders in a given society. The managerial level Looking at the practical or managerial level, different strategies might be required. In countries where public sector institutions were historically based on a broad range of political appointments, patronage and nepotism rather than a merit system, reform happens slowly. In order to improve transparency and accountability there needs to be more focused administrative reform. There also needs to be better institutional arrangements, better employment systems and practice, and professionalism. Basic and integral to such reform is capacity building. Life-long learning and learning organization are basics for human resource development. However, capacity building is not just training. It must include capacity building for human resources, for nancial management, for organizational management, for legal management, particularly under the trend of hollowing out of the State. For capacity building, there needs to be an integrated approach rather than a piece-meal method. Decentralization and empowerment need to be promoted. There also needs to be realized the idea of setting service standards to promote customer satisfaction in the public sector. In government, national integrity systems should be developed and utilized. A national integrity system is a master plan that aims to provide directions and guidance to society, and the nation at large, to promote high moral ideals and ethical standards, ethical behavior as well as rational commitment to integrity. For example, the Malaysian government utilized the National Integrity Plan (NIP) through the immediate

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implementation of transparency as a core principle at all government levels. With the launching of the NIP, the Malaysian government set up the Malaysian Institute of Integrity (2007) as a mechanism to promote and coordinate the implementation of the NIP. Also, it is necessary to concentrate on wet or vulnerable agencies for high impact. A wet agency can be an agency dealing with the commission or admission, a construction of mission, or permission, or taxation, customs ofce. These are the areas that might become vulnerable to corruption. Government ofcials should create strategies and systems to minimize the opportunity for corruption. Thus, Jon Quah (2001, 2003) asserted to establish the independent anti-corruption agency with comprehensive anticorruption legislations. Since Singapore established the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in 1952, several Asian countries adopted a Singaporean model of an anticorruption agency (Malaysia in 1967, Hong Kong in 1974, Thailand in 1999, South Korea in 2002, Indonesia in 2003 and others). In order to improve transparency, Jeremy Pope (2005), a co-founder of Transparency International, suggests inter alia the following general measures: international standards; national codes of conduct for politicians and public ofcials; citizens charters; ethics ofcers; monitoring and surveys; open public procurement; nancial disclosure (declaration of politicians and bureaucrats assets, gifts, nancing and conicts of interest); civil society watchdogs; legislative oversight; formal access to information regimes; a pluralistic and independent media; protection of whistleblowers; anti-corruption commissions; independent and immune judiciary with a judicial code of conduct; creation of integrity systems and horizontal accountability; integrity testing; effective records management; complaints systems; due police and judicial processes; minimizing licenses and permits; and independent revenue collections agencies, electronic and mobile government, privatization and competition policies, etc. There are many steps to achieving accountability. In order to implement or promote accountability, perhaps the basic step would be to rely on legal compliance. Then the next step up would be to a satisfactory level of commitment and reporting requirements, nancial and ethical policies and administrative procedures. The next level up would be developing the full spectrum of policies and processes related to accountability. Above that would be demonstrating evidence of impact aligning with strategic goals of the organization. All these must be embedded in the culture. Eventually, at the pinnacle, further development can be expected. In the hierarchy of accountability, a shift can be seen from simple obligation to being embedded in the culture. A conventional form of accountability is a central feature of governing but it has been central to the process of detecting and correcting errors: the focus is on exceptional events rather than the average performance of organizations and their programs. Since performance needs to be signicantly promoted in the public sector, conventional forms of accountability (i.e. punishment rather than improvement of performance; the exposure of misbehavior of political ofcials or hunting for scapegoats rather than the identication of a problem and the presentation of a solution) should be transformed into performance based accountability (Peters 2007). Performance based accountability

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will occur when positive consequences follow performance and negative consequences follow non-performance (Grimshaw and Lee 2007). Central government and local governments should utilize ICT. Public ofcials should develop interchange systems, build up government portal sites along with rich contents, and easy access to government must be provided for the benet of citizens and interested stakeholders. In the beginning perhaps a country may start with the application of ICT in public affairs hoping to establish an effective e-government. After that, more interaction needs to be promoted between government and citizens and stakeholders through virtual spaces. Then with transactions among many stakeholders, one can eventually expect a substantial transformation in enhancing transparency and accountability. In 2007, for example, Indias Government of Andhra Pradeshs e-Procurement project received the UN Public Service Award because it was an exemplary case in improving transparency, accountability and responsiveness in the public service. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION The effective way forward would seem to involve two complementary approaches, so two dimensions (the socio-political level and the managerial level) have been discussed in the previous section. In terms of the socio-political level, committed leadership and strong political will to promote transparency and accountability are critical. Also cultural changes are required; mindsets for minimizing or eliminating cynicism and fatalism, and the development of social capital in promoting trust, condence in government and condence in society. In addition to government reform, many countries need political reform, the judiciary needs legal reform, mass media need to promote investigative journalism, the private sector needs corporate governance reform. Civil society also should be actively involved in the process of governance and decision making. At the managerial level, public sector reform must be sustainable. Suitable infrastructure such as proper regulations and institutions need to be built up. Then software such as exible systems along with appropriate procedures cutting red tape should be developed and also effective measures for performance management and the utilization of ICT in building e-government and e-governance should be promoted. Individual and organizational learning must follow. The individual public servant must also develop new ideas, new skills and promote capacities, competencies and so forth; and they also should change their attitude and behavior toward more creative and innovative ways. There is, however, no need to re-invent the wheel. There are a number of good, best practice models around the world. Asian countries need to benchmark best practice but with Asian characteristics or indigenization. Sometimes, however, best practice from different regions of the world may not be the best solution. In this case, it

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is better to utilize the good experience of neighboring countries, which have a similar culture and historical background, and similar socio-economic situation, and thus are more relevant examples of good enough practice. Merilee Grindle (2004) coined the phrase good enough governance arguing that governance reforms in developing countries should aim not for a comprehensive idealized vision of good governance, but for a selected set of changes that are good enough to create critical improvements that t each countrys context. Many Asian developing countries inherited their bureaucratic systems from the colonial powers or western inuence so that one of the biggest challenges for Asian countries in the future is how to indigenize their own style of public management. Finally, it is true that many Asian developing countries need technical assistance from international development partners (Asian Development Bank, World Bank, UNDP, EC, USAID, etc.). However, more collaboration among donor organizations are strongly encouraged because development partners are sometimes competing with each other in providing technical assistance in some countries, which is not a desirable situation (Riddell 2007). Development partners should not spoil domestic stakeholders. For this reason, development partners need a customized program relevant to each countrys socio-economic and socio-political reality. For further development, it is necessary to have a more concerted effort among many developing partners with integrated programs for diverse stakeholders, not just typical civil servants or administrative scientists, but also for accountants, business leaders, media professionals, parliamentarians and civil society leaders. Overall, reform is more difcult than revolution because there is substantial resistance in the process of reform. There are no quick xes or magic bullets. Nonetheless, reform would not be impossible with the right approach.

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