Chapter 4
Management and accountability
Corporate governance
Senior executive and responsibilities
The Governor–General re–appointed the Commonwealth Ombudsman, Prof. John McMillan, to a second five–year term in March 2008. Mr Ron Brent, Deputy Ombudsman, was also re–appointed to a second five–year term in June 2008. Dr Vivienne Thom was appointed as Deputy Ombudsman in March 2006 for a five–year term.
The remuneration for the Ombudsman and Deputy Ombudsmen is determined in accordance with a ruling by the Remuneration Tribunal. Note 11 in the Financial Statements details executive remuneration.
The office's Executive team comprises the Ombudsman and two Deputy Ombudsmen. The Executive and six Senior Assistant Ombudsmen comprise the senior management team.
At 30 June 2009, the office's senior management team and their areas of responsibility were:
Mr Ron Brent, Deputy Ombudsman—main areas of responsibility:
- Corporate and Chief Finance Officer—Ms Jill Jepson, Senior Assistant Ombudsman
- corporate services comprising finance, human resources, records management and governance
- work practices and procedures, and business improvement
- information technology and communications infrastructure
- public affairs and outreach, including management of the office's intranet and internet sites.
- Postal, International, Child Support Agency and State Offices—Mr Adam Stankevicius, Senior Assistant Ombudsman
- specialised advice and complaint handling relating to Australia Post and registered postal operators of the Postal Industry Ombudsman scheme
- specialised advice and complaint handling relating to the Child Support Agency
- management of the office's International Program and related AusAID projects
- management and oversight of our state offices (Adelaide, Brisbane, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney) which handle complaints and undertake specialist work.
- Social Support and Indigenous—Mr George Masri, Senior Assistant Ombudsman
- specialised advice and complaint handling relating to the Department of Human Services (including Centrelink) and relevant policy departments
- the office's Indigenous Unit, with staff located in Alice Springs, Canberra and Darwin, specialising in issues involving Indigenous people.
Dr Vivienne Thom, Deputy Ombudsman—main areas of responsibility:
- ACT, Defence and Public Contact—Ms Anna Clendinning, Senior Assistant Ombudsman
- complaint handling relating to the ACT Ombudsman function
- specialised advice and complaint handling relating to the Australian Defence Force, the Department of Defence, Defence Housing Australia and the Department of Veterans' Affairs
- Public Contact Team, which provides a national point of contact for all approaches to the office made by telephone, email or online.
- Immigration and Legal—Ms Helen Fleming, Senior Assistant Ombudsman
- specialised advice and complaint handling relating to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship
- reviewing the cases of detainees who have been held in immigration detention for six months or more
- in–house legal advice and policy service to support staff in performing their functions.
- Law Enforcement, Inspections and Taxation—Ms Diane Merryfull, Senior Assistant Ombudsman
- complaint handling and investigating law enforcement activities relating to Australian Government law enforcement agencies
- inspecting the records of enforcement agencies for statutory compliance, adequacy, and comprehensiveness
- specialised advice and complaint handling relating to the Australian Taxation Office.
Corporate planning and review
The office's Strategic Plan 2008—2011 sets out the office's direction for that period. Each year the Ombudsman and Deputy Ombudsmen review the plan and establish the priorities for the next year. Our strategic priorities for 2009–10 are to:
- target outreach, relevant publications and communication activities to key stakeholders, particularly in regional Australia
- identify, through individual complaint investigation, problem areas in public administration that occur across government
- be responsive to areas of changing need in allocating resources
- implement a new electronic records management system to improve recordkeeping, consolidate new quality assurance and utilise the growing data the new system is delivering to improve the quality of our complaint handling
- further develop staff training and development programs
- enhance services over the internet, including improved opportunities to lodge complaints via the web.
The office's strategic plan informs its internal business plans, which are prepared on an annual basis. There are clear links between the objectives and the key measures of success of the strategic plan and the key result areas set in the business plans for all teams and in individual performance agreements for all staff members.
This year a more formal reporting framework has been developed to ensure there is rigour in the quality and quantity of data provided to the office's Executive. The Executive considers reports on finance, human resources, operations and information technology on a monthly basis. Business statistics are also available to all staff on an ongoing basis and are available electronically.
Management committees
Management committees are set up to assist the Executive with decision making in key areas. The committees make recommendations to the Executive, which meets weekly.
Senior Management
The Senior Assistant Ombudsmen, or their representatives, meet fortnightly to discuss a broad range of issues relating to the work of the office.
Information Management Committee
The Information Management Committee ensures that the development of information technology, work practices and governance strategies align with a whole–of–office approach to information management. The committee meets monthly. It is chaired by a Deputy Ombudsman and has representatives from relevant areas in the office, including the specialist investigation areas.
Internal Audit Committee
As required by the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997, the office has an Internal Audit Committee. The committee met four times during the year. The committee's role is to review, monitor and where necessary recommend improvements to internal control, financial reporting, internal audit functions, external audit processes, and the office processes for monitoring compliance with legislation and government policy directives.
At 30 June 2009 the members of the committee were Dr Vivienne Thom, Deputy Ombudsman (Chair); Ms Helen Fleming, Senior Assistant Ombudsman; Ms Anna Clendinning, Senior Assistant Ombudsman; and Mr Joe D'Angelo, Chief Finance and Information Officer, Department of the Senate (independent external member). Representatives from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), the office's internal auditors, WalterTurnbull, and the Chief Finance Officer attend committee meetings as observers.
During 2008–09 WalterTurnbull conducted three internal audits—review of internal accounting controls, audit of payroll and review of security practices. We are implementing the recommendations from the audits and consider progress against each action item at each Internal Audit Committee meeting.
Occupational Health and Safety Committee
The office's Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) Committee is made up of elected representatives from each state and territory office and chaired by the Assistant Manager, Human Resources who represents management. The committee met twice during the year.
Workplace Relations Committee
A Deputy Ombudsman chairs the Workplace Relations Committee. It consists of employee, management and union representatives, and is the main consultative body on workplace conditions within the office. The committee met twice during the year and considered matters such as staff survey action items, recruitment and selection guidelines, learning and development, accommodation and environmental management.
Corporate governance practices
Risk management
The office's risk management activities are overseen by the Internal Audit Committee. In 2007–08 the office updated its risk management framework in accordance with the standard AS/NZS 4360 Risk Management. In 2008–09 we engaged an external consultant to review and update our Strategic Business Assessment and Risk Management Plan. The risk assessment was comprehensive and identified six key risks for the office. Each risk was rated in accordance with the office's risk matrix. The analysis set out recommended management actions to mitigate the identified risks. We report on these management actions at each Internal Audit Committee meeting.
The office's risk management strategies include:
- embedding risk management strategies across the office in a systematic, consistent and effective manner
- identifying and managing all high and significant risk exposures
- integrating risk management practices with other existing processes such as business improvement
- incorporating assessment of risk within the quarterly business reporting framework.
All staff responsible for risk management within the office regularly attend related learning and development opportunities.
The office continues to participate in the annual Comcover Risk Management Benchmarking Survey, and we have noted a measurable improvement in our risk rating since last year, reflecting the effort we have put into this area. The office has moved from being below the average for small agencies on Comcover's overall performance rating to above the average (from 4.4 in 2008 to 5.2 in 2009, compared to 5.0 as the small agency average for both years). The key result area we need to address is in risk monitoring and review, and we will pay particular attention to this in 2009–10.
Business continuity planning
The purpose of our Business Continuity Plan is to ensure that the most critical work of the office can continue with minimal disruption, or be quickly resumed, in the event of a disaster. We revised the plan during the year. The plan utilises the strengths of a national office structure to respond to a potential problem with one or more of the office's nine sites. This was tested during the year when our public contact activities were twice transferred temporarily to other sites.
We scenario-tested the plan in April 2009. The test highlighted the need to update a number of documents and points of weakness in our information technology infrastructure. We revised the plan to address the gaps identified.
Fraud prevention and control
During 2008–09 the office reviewed and updated its fraud control plan and fraud risk assessment. The risk of fraud remains low for the office. The Internal Audit Committee oversees the implementation of the fraud control plan.
I certify that the Commonwealth Ombudsman's office has prepared fraud risk assessments and fraud control plans and has in place appropriate fraud prevention, detection, investigation, reporting and data collection procedures and processes that meet the specific needs of the office and comply with the Commonwealth Fraud Control Guidelines.
Prof. John McMillan
Commonwealth Ombudsman
Ethical standards
The office upholds the Australian Public Service values, as specified in s 10 of the Public Service Act 1999. The key values of the Commonwealth Ombudsman's office are independence, impartiality, integrity, accessibility, professionalism and teamwork. Our values are documented in the office's Strategic Plan 2008–2011 and are incorporated in the Commonwealth Ombudsman Collective Agreement 2008–2010.
The importance of the values is outlined in induction documentation and training for staff, and in internal documents including the Harassment Prevention Policy and the Work Practice Manual. It is reinforced on a continuous basis through mechanisms such as our internal quality assurance processes, staff training and dealing with complaints about service delivery. We also gauge internal perceptions of our ethical standards through major surveys, such as the staff survey conducted in March 2009, and engagement with the Australian Public Service Ethics Contact Officer Network, which commenced in May 2009.
Complaint management
The office has an established internal complaint and review process, which allows complaints about the office's decisions and service quality to be resolved quickly, fairly and informally. We evaluated our practices against our Better Practice Guide to Complaint Handling and this led to a number of steps to improve the way we accept and monitor complaints about the office's service delivery. The office's complaints and grievances mechanism is set out in our service charter and detailed reporting is provided in Chapter 3—Performance report.
Commonwealth Disability Strategy
The office is committed to the Commonwealth Disability Strategy to ensure equality of access to the services of the Commonwealth Ombudsman for people with disabilities and to eliminate discriminatory practices by staff. We are committed to meeting our obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 through implementation of the Commonwealth Disability Strategy, the Commonwealth Ombudsman's Disability Action Plan 2005–2008 and the Workplace Diversity Framework and Plan 2007–2009. While our Disability Action Plan formally covered the period to 2008, we continue to use this plan and the principles it contains. We will revise the plan when the review of the Commonwealth Disability Strategy by the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs is completed.
The office's operations encompass the activities of regulator, service provider and employer. Employer activities are reported by the Australian Public Service Commission.
Regulator
The Commonwealth Ombudsman does not directly enforce the disability discrimination legislation, but provides a complaint resolution service about Australian Government administrative actions. This assists in meeting the objectives of the Commonwealth Disability Strategy. This can include recommendations on enforcement of legislative obligations that apply to Australian Government agencies. Recommendations and remedies arising from some complaint investigations may also be particularly relevant to people with a disability. The own motion investigation report Assessment of claims for disability support pension from people with acute or terminal illness: an examination of social security law and practice (Report No. 2/2009), published in March 2009, is one such example.
The Ombudsman seeks to promote awareness of services in all areas of the Australian community, and provides an online complaint lodgement facility on the office's website. Ombudsman staff liaise regularly with community organisations to promote awareness of the Ombudsman's services.
Service provider
In developing and maintaining our website, we have used the priority 1 and 2 checkpoints of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 as our benchmark. Activities to ensure compliance include testing colour contrast for the vision impaired, limiting the use of graphics, simplifying navigation and providing a site map, separating document formatting from content with style sheets, providing text equivalents for non–text elements, and improving metadata. We have started redeveloping our website to further improve accessibility by all members of the public.
Environmental matters
The Ombudsman is required to report on certain environmental matters under s 516A(5)(a) of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), detailing the office's environmental performance and its contribution to ecologically sustainable development.
The Ombudsman continued to encourage staff to manage all resources, including energy, prudently and in an ecologically responsible manner. The office's Environmental Management Policy focuses on the conservation of energy within the workplace, including the use of light, computer equipment, water management, transport management and recycling. The office recycles toner/printer cartridges, paper and cardboard products, classified waste, cans, bottles and plastic. These strategies are communicated to staff through the Workplace Relations Committee, the office intranet, and induction program. We are also introducing an electronic records management system, which will help to reduce paper usage.
The Ombudsman office's estimated energy consumption per person per year decreased by 9% from 2006–07 to 2007–08. This followed a decrease of 3% in the previous year. Data for 2008–09 was not available at the time of preparation of this report.
All our offices are shared with other tenants. When an office needs to move location, one factor we try to take into account in selecting a new location is the environmental credentials of alternative locations. During 2008–09 we were fortunate to be able to move our Brisbane office to a new office that has achieved a four star Green Star office rating. The building has a high performance façade with excellent shading and glazing characteristics to increase internal space energy efficiency. Other features include a capacity for grey–water re–use and irrigation, onsite storm water filtration and re–use for flushing toilets, and a high use of recycled concrete and steel in its construction.
As part of our core complaint–handling activities, we may also investigate matters that relate specifically to the EPBC Act. For example, in June 2009 the Ombudsman released the report Delays in preparation of Heritage Strategies by Australian Government agencies: Implementation of section 341ZA of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Report No. 9/2009). Among other things, the report noted that few Australian Government agencies were aware of their obligation to prepare a heritage strategy for managing places they own or control, in accordance with s 341ZA of the EPBC Act. The Ombudsman recommended that the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts write to all departments, alerting them to the obligation under s 341ZA resting on all agencies within their portfolio. He made a number of other recommendations to assist relevant agencies to comply with the Act.
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