Are ICTs promoting government accountability?: A comparative analysis of e-governance developments in 19 OECD countries

This paper tries to assess to what extent Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) enable better accountability in public bureaucracies through e-governance initiatives. Accountability has extended its meaning to embrace, besides financial accountability, openness and transparency initiatives which aim at making both the control of government by the citizenry and public discussion between citizens and governments easier. New styles of governance represent a change from traditional bureaucratic systems to pluricentric systems. This article conducts an empirical study of the effect of ICTs on accountability in the central governments of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and 15 EU countries, the latter representing around 84% of the EU population. Our analysis shows that developments and changes in financial accountability levels depend on both the context and characteristics of public administration styles and on how information is disclosed. The results in the political and citizen dialogue dimensions of public accountability show that the application of ICTs to the public sector, fits well into any kind of public administration style, especially at the billboard stage, since it does not entail substantial changes in the style of the government to citizen (G2C) relationship. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.