Chapter 1
Ombudsman's review
Promoting good administration
In addition to dealing with individual complaints and inspecting records for statutory compliance, the Ombudsman's office promotes good administration through a variety of other methods.
We are conscious of the need to provide a broader range of information, in different formats, to assist agencies improve their public administration.
In 2008–09 we released 18 reports on own motion and major investigations. These covered areas as diverse as contracting, use of interpreters, grant administration, assessment of claims for disability support pension, dealing with allegations of customer fraud, and notification to people that mail is awaiting collection.
In April 2009 we released the Better Practice Guide to Complaint Handling. The guide defines the essential principles for effective complaint handling. It can be used by agencies when developing a complaint–handling system or when evaluating or monitoring an existing system.
During the year we released three e–bulletins that describe recent case studies of finalised complaints from which lessons can be drawn that are considered to be of interest to a wider audience. We also produced seven fact sheets to assist agencies in various facets of public administration.
In addition we made 13 submissions to Parliamentary inquiries and six other submissions to major reviews.
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