An essential aspect of public accountability is the requirement for public officials to explain their actions to enable citizens to understand the basis under which decisions are made that affect their daily lives, the communities in which they live and the country as a whole. A leading authority in the 1960s on the subject, E. L. Normanton, argued that:
The ultimate purpose of public accountability is to provide information. Those who would restrict the flow of information about the activities of bodies which spend public money and execute decisions of government are following an authoritarian line…The publishing of impartial information by state audit, and its open debate by parliament and the press are not essential to life nor even to the exercise of power. But they help towards that most elusive of blessings, good government, and they are a token of at least one kind of higher civilisation.
