Kettl D.F. (2014) notes some barriers that hinder the judiciary, the executive, and the president from carrying out their mandates effectively on the role of public oversight. Most of the actions have a regulation body from which guidelines are drawn. If the regulation agencies, be it the judiciary or other government sponsored bodies receive insufficient resources in terms of funds, human resource, machinery, among others, they are incapacitated such that their role remain below the exceptions. It is worth noting that the availability of resource guarantees the proper outcome. If the government and judiciary allocate insufficient resources to the agencies, the government loses the moral standing to demand for accountability. It is not possible to expect the best results from an underfunded agency.
In addition, some of the affected industries and manufacturer fight back regulations. It is common for the politicians to be coerced to pass a regulation that may not meet the standards set by its own agencies (p. 379). Such a situation occurs due to shortage of factual information or contradicting information from the courts and the concerned parties. Once the government has passed a policy; it has to support it whether it is good or bad. Therefore, in the event that he decisions had some negative implications, it becomes difficult for the government, or the judiciary to offer the best accountability on the same.
The court dilemmas lead to a confused state of affairs such that it is difficult to know which court decision is right ant which is wrong. The mixture of facts and law (p. 392) make it difficult for the court to offer the best ruling and guidelines on how a particular matter is to be handled. In addition, the oversight committees do not have any particular accountability threshold to do the oversight. Some committees do oversight more than others (p. 404) and in this respect; therefore, the levels of accountability vary. Therefore, for the best oversight, the government has to provide enough resources, fund for research to establish facts, and set a threshold and mechanisms for self-regulation during oversight.
Reference
Kettl, D.F. (2014). Politics of the administrative process, 6th edition. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Chapter 13 and 14 ISBN 13: 978-1-4833-3293-2.
