Going from the talk to doing the walk: extending Malaysian public sector transparency

Abu Bakar, Nur Barizah and Mohamad, Muslim Har Sani (2009) Going from the talk to doing the walk: extending Malaysian public sector transparency. In: 21st Asian-Pacific Conference on International Accounting Issues, 22-25 November 2009, Las Vegas, USA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The most recent Malaysian general election held in 2007 saw an unprecedented result which denied the ruling coalition, the National Front (BN) a two-thirds majority which it had enjoyed for the last 50 years. More specifically, the election results has allowed for the first time in the history of Malaysian politics, the Opposition front comprising three parties to capture five key states in the Malaysian Peninsula to form the State Governments and collectively, the three Opposition parties captured 10 out of 11 parliamentary constituencies in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur. Political analysts and observers locally and globally have attributed this swing in votes partly to the public call for change towards a more transparent and accountable government through having a stronger opposition in the Malaysian democratic process. Besides, the postmortem done by the ruling government has also found similar reasons among others. Consequently, as now the Federal Government (i.e. BN) faces a stronger system of checks-and-balances, it has no choice but to work hard to meet the public’s expectations and call for change if it wishes to stay relevant within Malaysian political landscape. This paper aims to discuss an aspect that the Malaysian government may emulate from the governments of other developed countries in an effort to enhance its accountability with the objective of regaining public trusts and confidence. In particular, this paper argues that this can be done through having a comprehensive and well-publicized performance measurement system in government bodies. The paper first discusses the developments of performance measurements in developed countries, including the disclosure, benchmarking and auditing of performance information in those economies. Some sectors in public sector were then been brought forward to serve as examples to further illustrate the issue. The paper then proceeds with brief description on the Malaysian public sector to provide some insights on the public sector scenario in Malaysia. It then elaborates the status quo of performance measurement initiatives in Malaysian public sector. Lastly, it evaluates the possibility of Malaysian public sector to follow those initiatives that had been carried out in some developed countries.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Plenary Papers)
Additional Information:	5878/5409
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Public sector transparency, Malaysia
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance > HJ9701 Public accounting
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button):	Kulliyyah of Economics and Management Sciences > Department of Accounting
Depositing User:	Dr Muslim Har Sani Mohamad
Date Deposited:	26 Oct 2011 22:37
Last Modified:	15 Jun 2017 15:16
URI:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/5409

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