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In this paper we examine the ways in which implementing new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to automate public sector processes affects accountability. New technologies alter conventional modes of behavior in the public sector, shedding light on certain areas of bureaucratic practice and obscuring others, and in doing so they enhance accountability and exacerbate dysfunctions. To investigate how ICTs influence the accountability equation, we explore a range of empirically documented e-government implementations, from simple transactions involving low-levels of automation to highly automated systems such as fingerprint analysis technologies. Drawing on these empirical examples, we develop a tentative framework of ICT-exacerbated accountability dysfunctions. Following this, we then discuss potential accountability arrangements for different types of e-government processes, in hope of realizing the benefits of new technologies while minimizing the potential for unaccountability and dysfunction that could arise from their application. Throughout, we stress the necessity of striking a balance between the potential benefits of ICTs to the bureaucratic process and systems that may reduce efficiency but uphold accountability.

The prospect of increasingly autonomous military robots has raised concerns about the obfuscation of human responsibility. This papers argues that whether or not and to what extent human actors are and will be considered to be responsible for the behavior of robotic systems is and will be the outcome of ongoing negotiations between the various human actors involved. These negotiations are about what technologies should do and mean, but they are also about how responsibility should be interpreted and how it can be best assigned or ascribed. The notion of responsibility practices, as the paper shows, provides a conceptual tool to examine these negotiations as well as the interplay between technological development and the ascription of responsibility. To illustrate the dynamics of responsibility practices the paper explores how the introduction of unmanned aerial vehicles has led to (re)negotiations about responsibility practices, focusing particularly on negotiations within the US Armed Forces.