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There is widespread concern that the rising costs of higher education are making college unaffordable for many students and their families. Federal and state support is central to promoting college affordability; however, persistent state budget constraints have limited funding for public colleges. GAO was asked to study state policies affecting affordability and identify approaches to encourage states to make college more affordable. This report examines, among other things, how state financial support and tuition have changed at public colleges over the past decade. It also examines how the federal government works with states to improve college affordability and what additional approaches are available for doing so. In conducting this work, GAO analyzed trends in state funding for public colleges, tuition, and state student aid using data from the U.S. Department of Education for all public sector colleges from fiscal years 2003 through 2012, the most recent data available at the time of this study. GAO also identified academic studies on state higher education policies and affordability published since 2011 and interviewed 25 academic experts and organizations in the fields of higher education or state policy. Finally, GAO reviewed Education programs and proposals and obtained perspectives from experts and organizations to identify approaches the federal government could use to incentivize state action. ; United States Government Accountability Office

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Public Administration on 05/05/2015, available online: doi:10.1080/01900692.2014.952823 ; This article reports on a study carried out on the impact of quality assurance mechanisms on street-level bureaucrats in Northern England (teachers, nurses and social workers). A key aim of the research was to explore the ways in which these mechanisms negotiate the much older regulatory function of time. The findings suggest that these mechanisms contribute to forms of time compression across professional activities, time compression in turn having consequences for professional judgement. The study explores the mechanisms via which this occurs, while also examining the implications of the research for debates about democracy, political regulation, and public sector management.

In 2010, Bell, California was a small city with a big corruption problem. Its city manager at that time, Robert Rizzo, had developed a plan to enrich himself at the city's expense, and covered his tracks by involving numerous other city officials in his corrupt scheme, including the city councilmembers who were supposed to serve as a check on Rizzo's power. Because virtually all of Bell's top-level officials ended up implicated in the criminal conduct, the limited number of checks and balances built into Bell's governing structure failed. And because Bell did not have any formal anti-corruption mechanisms in place — particularly oversight and transparency measures — no one outside of the small group of decision makers running Bell had the ability or duty to ensure that the city's leaders were governing with integrity. The situation that Bell found itself in as 2010 drew to a close — namely, cleaning up the mess caused by having a fox in charge of the henhouse of city funds — is one that is a risk in small cities and towns everywhere. Even with appropriate accountability and transparency regulations (which were not present in Bell before the Rizzo scandal), small municipalities like Bell constitute outsized corruption risks because the oversight they rely upon, at the county, state, and federal levels of government, are simply inadequate. The Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School focuses on helping government officials fight public corruption more effectively, with a particular focus on cities. We reviewed the anti-corruption measures put into place by Bell's post-scandal administration, and recommend certain improvements we felt were advisable to ensure that Bell will be secure against a recurrence of the corruption visited upon the city by Rizzo and his coconspirators.

The World Trade Organization's dispute settlement body provides the teeth of theglobal trade regime – empowering it with substantial means to adjudicate in disagreementsbetween Member-states over the implementation of WTO law. The WTO's teeth have, however, also helped make the organisation controversial as part of a general critique from civil society groups concerned that global trade governance has become unaccountable to the societies it affects. Could the growing presence of NGOs and other non-state actors in WTO dispute settlement – empirically identified within a growing body of literature – solve this apparent accountability deficit? Drawing upon existing findings and new research, the article argues that non-state actors have significant consequences for the accountability of WTO dispute settlement, but to whom the system is accountable and whether these consequences are good or bad is not pre-determined. Rather, as the burgeoning literature on accountability shows, the term itself is multi-faceted. Only by engaging with specific cases, as is done here in the case of WTO dispute settlement, can research properly draw out the shape of accountability in global governance.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of e-government for horizontal/social accountability (to citizens) by looking into its shifting location. Its main purpose is to show how the introduction of information and communication technology in the public sector changes how public sector work is organised, shifting the traditional sources of accountability and to discuss the implications of those changes.


Design/methodology/approach
The study comes from desk-based research that brings together the literature on electronic government and accountability studies and situates them in the context of a bureaucratic public sector.


Findings
It shows that e-government entails digitalization of public sector work by restructuring work, re-organising public information and knowledge and re-orientating officials-citizens relation. It argues that in the e-government era accountability is inscribed in the technology and its embodied standards; is a horizontal technological relation that renders officials accountable to the handling of digital interfaces; and renders citizens co- producers of digital information responsible for bringing the public to account. The paper shows that these changes do not necessarily bring better or worse accountability results but change the sources of accountability bringing shifts in its locations, thereby rendering it more precarious. The paper ends by discussing the implications of digital accountability for good public administration.


Originality/value
With the unprecedented level of attention currently being paid to "digital government" at the moment, this is a timely paper that seeks to address the accountability implications of these shifts. The study offers a practice-based, relational definition of accountability and a Weberian account of bureaucratic government, followed by an exploration of ways in which this is being challenged or replaced with a new informatisation enabled/supported by new "technologies of accountability".

Since the establishment of subsidiarity in the early 1990s, the European-wide move to devolve governance has been interpreted by previous and present UK governments adopting differing ideological positions within a 'localism agenda'. Interpretations have changed the dynamics of the community right to challenge, as well as the structure and mechanisms for community accountability. This article adopts the typology of forms of local governance developed by Lowndes and Sullivan (2008, How low can you go? Rationales and challenges for neighbourhood governance. Public Administration, 86 (1), 1-22) to explore the hypothesis that the localism agenda realigns the synergy between neighbourhood rationales; citizen engagement in service delivery and the opportunity for public scrutiny and accountability. It concludes that opportunities for communities to challenge service delivery and ensure increased accountability to the local level will be tempered by increased complexity and demands on local authorities to develop new relationships with both service users and providers. Adapted from the source document.

The purpose of our study is to broaden the investigation of nonprofit misconduct beyond financial fraud perpetrated by individual actors and to identify structural features that are more or less likely to be associated with actual misconduct. We utilize the Charity Navigator Advisory System and related press releases to identify 215 nonprofit organizations with confirmed or alleged misconduct. We also collect the IRS Form 990 information for 133 out of the 215 organizations with known misconduct and 150 organizations without known misconduct to compare their accountability structures. Our findings suggest that, while financial fraud committed by individual perpetrators against their organizations is the most frequently identified type of misconduct, a substantial number of other types of misbehaviors also commonly occur. Our comparison analysis indicates that organizations with known misconduct deviate significantly from scandal-free charities in several structural aspects.

This thesis argues that dignity is central to the realisation of the right to health in Nigeria and shapes the relationship of the Nigerian State with its people. The thesis posits that a contextual understanding of the nature of human dignity in Nigeria is predicated on a social compact where individuals and communities accede to the preservation of the Nigerian State and its union, on the condition that it will manage the power and economic resources of the Nigerian State for the fulfilment of the welfare of every Nigerian. A contextual framing of human dignity in shaping the management of Nigeria's affairs is shown to have been jettisoned over the years. Due to the lack of political will to act for the benefit of the populace, as well as corruption and mismanagement of scarce and limited resources, the Nigerian State has been limited in its ability to fulfil its obligations to the social compact. The result has been a steady decline of the nation's health system at all levels with dire consequences for the lives and wellbeing of the Nigerian people. While important legislative intervention has been made through the National Health Act (NHA)to remedy this dire state of the Nigerian health system, it is not the panacea to the multifaceted challenges facing healthcare in Nigeria. Drawing from other jurisdictions, the thesis shows that the realisation of the NHA will be largely dependent on its social, political, and legal framing. I argue that in the face of persistent State inaction, the courts must act to provide socio-economic justice and State accountability. In providing judicial clarity and enforcement, the courts must be mindful of various pitfalls in the framing of the key legal principles of the minimum core, the test of reasonableness and requirements for the progressive realisation of the right to health. I contend that due to a flawed understanding of the nature and intent of the right to health, there is a risk of undue deference to the State's framing of its obligations and ability to meet those obligations. I propose that the right to health must instead be understood and framed as a vital claim against the State and its power, rather than as simply a social good to be provided on the whims of the ruling class and their own political priorities. I argue that to hold the State accountable to its obligations to fulfil the right to health in a manner that is people centred, the right must be framed as being nested in the maximal respect and realisation of human dignity.

Purpose: The relationship between central and sub-national (local) government is contentious around distribution of power and control. There is a specific concern when a (local) place has power devolved, but centralised hierarchical accountability pervades. Design/methodology/approach: This paper addresses that concern by considering recent innovative developments around place-based accountability arrangements in England, through analysis of official reports and news media. Findings: The article illustrates aspirations towards accountability to the local electorate clash with hierarchical accountability that remains an omnipresent mechanism of central control. It is suggested, accountability forums be developed to blend hierarchy and the place leadership role of directly elected mayors. This could enable local accountability to the electorate, whilst taking account of the context of specific regional level complexities. Originality/value: This is one of the first papers to consider issues of place leadership and place based accountability within the framework of hierarchical accountability for central and local government relations.

An enduring debate concerns how responsibility for patient safety should be distributed between organisational systems and individual professionals. Though rule-based, calculus-like approaches intended to support a 'just culture' have become popular, they perpetuate an asocial and atomised account. In this article, we use insights from practice theory - which sees organisational phenomena as accomplished in everyday actions, with individual agency and structural conditions as a mutually constitutive, dynamic duality - along with contributions from the political science and ethics literature as a starting point for analysis. Presenting ethnographic data from five hospitals, three in one high-income country and two in low-income countries, we offer an empirically informed, normative rethinking of the role of personal accountability, identifying the collective nature of the healthcare enterprise and the extent to which patient safety depends on contributions from many hands. We show that moral responsibility for actions and behaviours is an irreducible element of professional practice, but that individuals are not somehow 'outside' and separate from 'systems': they create, modify and are subject to the social forces that are an inescapable feature of any organisational system; each element acts on the other. Our work illustrates starkly the structuring effects of the broader institutional and socioeconomic context on opportunities to 'be good'. These findings imply that one of the key responsibilities of organisations and wider institutions in relation to patient safety is the fostering of the conditions of moral community.

This research aims to identify the factors that influence the accountability of regional financial management amid pandemics. Specifically, this research is focused on the influence of internal control systems, and financial report accessibility towards the accountability of regional financial management amid the pandemics of Covid-19. 87 government's employees of Riau Province are involved as samples, who are directly elaborated in regional financial report management, namely Head of Department/Agency, Head of Sub-Division in Financial, Head of Sub-Division in Program, Planning, and Report. Primary data, in the form of research respondent's perceptions (subject) through survey, are required for research data. Data collection employs a direct survey with a questionnaire as the selected instrument. The quantitative method is utilized as the research method. For data analysis, Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) Version 25 is used. Based on the result of the research, it is revealed that the internal control system and financial reports accessibility, partially have a positive and significant influence on the accountability of regional financial management.

This study aimed at finding out empirical evidences whether the application of performance-based budgeting affected the performance accountability of Wajo government, seeing the effects of the application of performance-based budgeting to performance accountability of government agencies using four variables, namely, the budget planning (X1), the implementation of the budget (X2), the budget reporting/accountability (X3), and the performance evaluation (X4). In this study, the samples were 100 people. They are from 33 regional work units (SKPD) which consists of a team of Local Government Budget (TAPD) who involved in formatting the government budgets of Wajo regency. Data were collected through direct observation and survey obtained by distribution of questionnaires to the respondents. This study used multiple linear regression models with software SPSS. The study results showed that the budget planning and the budget reporting / accountability gave positive and significant impacts on performance accountability of government agencies, the implementation of the budget and the performance evaluation. It is shown from the results of multiple linear regression test which showed Y = 7.904 + 0.223 X1 + 0.222 X2 + 1.433 + 0.227 X3 X4. In conclusion, the application of performance-based budgeting gave positive effects on performance accountability of government agencies.

The provision of aid is increasingly under scrutiny with increasing demands for results. This raises the question: what are our expectations from aid and are they realistic? Too often accountability is argued for without questioning if what is understood by the term is relevant or applicable. The Political Economy of Aid and Accountability explores the real meaning of accountability and argues for a new approach to aid more relevant to recipient countries.