Chapter 1
Ombudsman's review
Engagement
We continued our efforts to make the broader community, and in particular key stakeholders, aware of the role of the Ombudsman's office and to hear about the issues that concern them in dealing with Australian Government agencies or other organisations delivering services on behalf of the Government. The number of our outreach activities increased by 28% on 2007–08, largely due to increased outreach in association with the Northern Territory Emergency Response.
Other examples of our broader outreach activities include conducting roundtable discussions with community groups and other special interest groups in all state capital cities, and participating in joint activities with state, territory and private sector Ombudsman offices.
Our level of engagement with Australian Government agencies has improved. In addition to our focus on producing a broader range of material to assist agencies improve administrative practices, we have strengthened our relationship with a number of agencies about which we usually receive few complaints. In 2007–08 we changed the allocation of responsibilities for dealing with complaints about those agencies, so that our state offices specialise in dealing with agencies within particular portfolios. This approach has proved beneficial. It enables us to better manage our relations with these agencies, provides a higher degree of consistency in the way we deal with complaints about these agencies, and gives a greater capacity to identify any systemic issues.
Our work with regional partners, funded by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), passed three milestones during the year:
- We entered into a new memorandum of agreement with the Ombudsman Commission of Papua New Guinea to run for a minimum of three years. This follows the first agreement, which started in 2005 and resulted in a number of important exchanges and collaborative activities between the Commission and this office.
- The Indonesian Parliament passed legislation to create a new Ombudsman of the Republic of Indonesia, and we started working closely with our Indonesian partners during the transition phase as the new legislation is implemented.
- In collaboration with our Pacific Islands Forum partners, we launched the Pacific Ombudsman Alliance. The Alliance works to strengthen regional cooperation and coordination between Pacific Island Ombudsmen and other Pacific Island nations that are working to establish ombudsman functions and like agencies.
Top
