Publishing “Government Accountability”
A further means of consolidating the Office’s claim to expertise was the publication of Government Accountability, “a framework for evaluating and improving existing accountability relationships” in government ( Office, 1994a, p. 3). Government Accountability offers a set of practices that are claimed to be descriptive of healthy accountability relationships, namely, to set measurable goals, monitor progress, report on results, and evaluate results. The document argues that performance information should be assessed using the same general standards by which financial information is evaluated, that is, understandability, relevance, reliability, comparability, and whether the cost of providing the information is lower than the expected benefit. This influential report was even presented at an academic conference, as a contribution to accounting knowledge.