Accountability and Transparency in Local Government
Accountability and Transparency remain the fundamental principles that ensure the proper functioning of government administration, be it at the central or local level. Both principles are central to good governance and continue to be pivotal in ensuring that those in power are discharging their functions and duties honestly and legitimately. Both terms are not short of definitions. Accountability can be seen to be about an “authoritative relationship in which one person is formally entitled to demand that another answers for (that is, provide an account of) his or her actions; rewards or punishments may be meted out to the latter depending on whether those actions conform to the former’s wishes”. Transparency on the other hand is about ‘self-disclosure’ or the ‘opposite of secrecy’.