In addition to direct political control over the bureaucracy by the executive and legislative branches of government, administrative accountability is maintained indirectly through organizational structures and processes, professional values within the organization, and the momentum of organizational memory and practices.
The most frequently used mechanism of administrative accountability is reliance on formal organizational structures and processes. In fact, much of the reinvention of government aim to achieve greater personal accountability through flattening organizations and increasing the discretionary authority at the lowest levels of the administrative hierarchy.
There is significant importance in creating personnel and organizational accountability through appropriate structuring of administrative processes and systems. These, in addition to organizational design and operations, play a central role in achieving administrative accountability in the policy implementation process.
Despite the best organizational and political efforts to maintain accountability over administrators during the policy implementation process, we have not eliminated the need for the exercise of extensive administrative discretion. The growing recognition of this necessity has shifted attention away from relying on mechanisms of external political and organizational accountability to those that depend on the bureaucracy to police itself based on a set of broad legal rules established by the legislature.
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