ABSTRACT
When we talk about holding someone (or some organization) accountable, we must, at the least, specify to whom and for what the person (or it) is accountable. Budgets, both as decision-making processes and as documents recounting the decisions made, determine the substance of what officials are expected to do with public resources, as well as the manner and extent to which particular individuals and groups in a society are involved in specifying those expectations and can hold officials accountable for their resource-using behavior. In the United States, a century of budget and accounting reforms as well as developments in information technology have increased the quantity, and arguably the quality, of information available to specialists and non-specialists alike, for expressing expectations and comparing behavior to those expectations. It remains an open question, however, whether, how, and to what extent U.S. citizens are collectively prepared to use that information to hold themselves as well as their public servants accountable.
