Public Accountability of Provider Agencies: The Case of the Australian ‘Centrelink’

Abstract

Introduction: executive agencies and accountability One of the major international innovations in public sector institutional design of the last decade has been the institutional separation of purchasing and providing functions previously carried out by line departments (OECD, 1995: 32). This split may take a number of different forms (Department of Finance, 1995), including the allocation of providing functions to new executive agencies which are institutionally separate but still remain part of the executive branch of government. The legal status of such agencies may vary from that of designated units within the controlling departments (as with the United Kingdom ‘executive agencies’) to that of separate departments or statutory authorities (‘crown entities’ to use the New Zealand term). Though, strictly speaking, the term ‘executive agency’ can be reserved for providing agencies without separate statutory status on the United Kingdom model (e.g. Wettenhall, 2000: 81), it will be used here to cover any type of government agency, including statutory authorities, established with the sole purpose of providing state-funded services under contract. In Westminster-style jurisdictions where executive agencies have been introduced, notably the United Kingdom and New Zealand, controversy has surrounded their political accountability, particularly the effect of the new structure on ministerial responsibility (Martin, 1994, 1997; O’Toole and Chapman, 1995; Pyper, 1995; Barberis, 1998; Hodgetts, 1998; Polidano, 1999). To what extent, if any, has the break between purchasing ministers and providing agencies led to a corresponding change in the accountability of ministers to Parliament? Have agency heads taken over the accountability for service provision, leaving ministers accountable only for purchasing issues and matters of general policy? Or is it business as usual, with ministers still being held accountable for details of service provision? No clear consensus has emerged, either in theory or practice. When crises have occurred, ministers, officials and public alike have sometimes been left floundering in a tide of mutual recrimination as each side points the blame at the other (Barberis, 1998; cf. Gregory, 1998).