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” (Harmon 1995:25).
Transparency on the other hand is about ‘self-disclosure’ or the ‘opposite of secrecy’ (Florini
2002).