The role of accounting practices in achieving transparency in government and public services

Abstract

Transparency is part of good leadership. Many governments in the world are embracing the idea of encouraging transparency in governance to ensure that the citizens are aware of how the government is being run. The current project addressed the role of accounting processes in achieving transparency in the government and public services. The study involves an understanding of the cases of transparency and what makes the government and public services not to be transparent enough. Transparency is required in the government and the public services to ensure that the members of the public are served in the best way possible. The current research used qualitative research methods, specifically using the Transcendental In the literature, scholars comment that accounting plays a significant role in driving transparency. Furthermore, corruption and information and communication technology have been mentioned in the literature as important factors in the understanding of transparency dynamics. Inspired by gaps in the literature, this study explores transparency and tries to understand how the above-mentioned factors connect to securing transparency. To achieve that target, this study is qualitative based. The qualitative approach involved conducting semi-structure interviews with relevant professionals at the local government setting for this study. The findings from this study suggest that there is a desire to implement transparency, and that accounting, corruption and information and communication technologies influence the extent of transparency achieved, negatively for corruption and positively for the other two factors. However, despite the desire, transparency is not achieved because there is no genuine intention supported with a clear will to ensure that the citizens access information about what the government is doing and how. The limitations of this research have been acknowledged and future research directions suggested.