Accountability and joined-up government

The Coombs Royal Commission identified a range of issues relating to the coordination of services. While there has been renewed interest over the last five years in the UK, Canada and Australia in initiatives that support joined-up and cross-cutting government, there has been only limited work to address the potential recognised by the Commission for these initiatives to result in unclear accountabilities. This paper reviews accountability approaches to joined-up government and identifies that while the sharing of accountability for outcomes has emerged quietly over the past 25 years, joining-up initiatives are demanding a clearer articulation of causal relationships regarding the sharing of outcomes and a fuller consideration of the multiple relationships in the partnership arrangements involved.