Chapter 7
Helping people, improving government
Administrative deficiency
Section 15 of the Ombudsman Act 1976 lists the grounds on which the Ombudsman can formally make a report to an agency, and ultimately to the Prime Minister and Parliament. A small number of such reports are made each year to agencies; reports to the Prime Minister or Parliament are rare. Most complaints to the Ombudsman can be resolved informally, and without the need to reach a firm view on whether an agency's conduct was defective. This reflects the emphasis of our work on achieving remedies for complainants, and on improving agency complaint–handling processes and public administration generally.
Cases nevertheless arise in which administrative deficiency should be recorded and notified to agencies. This helps draw attention to problems in agency decision making and processes, and feeds into the systemic work of the Ombudsman's office. The purpose of a finding of administrative deficiency is not to reprimand the agency concerned, and the individual findings are not separately published in the same way that reports under s 15 are usually published.
During 2008–09 we recorded 533 cases where there were one or more issues of administrative deficiency. The significant increase from last year (368 cases) generally reflects revised internal procedures and training, aimed at ensuring that we record all cases of administrative deficiency that we identify. Some complaints discussed elsewhere in this report led to a finding of administrative deficiency.
The following additional examples illustrate the administrative deficiencies recorded during the year.
- Factual error. A person applied for a benefit, and the agency officer needed to find out more about the person's circumstances over a particular time period. However, they asked about the wrong time period, during which the person's circumstances had changed, resulting in the person being denied the benefit.
- Human error. An agency raised a debt against a person. She provided evidence to agency staff that showed she was not legally liable for the debt. However, the staff failed to record this information, with the result that the agency continued to pursue her for the debt.
- Legal error. An agency received uncorroborated information from one parent about the care of a child. The agency wrote to the other parent asking for details of the care of the child. That parent did not respond because she had provided that information separately six days earlier. The agency cancelled her payment without having regard to the information she had provided, contrary to the legislation.
- Inadequate advice, explanation or reasons. An agency raised a debt against a person. When she queried the debt, the agency initially told her it was probably due to a known systems problem and the debt would be referred further in the agency for review. The woman contacted the agency several times over the next six weeks but there was no progress on the review. As a result of her last contact, the agency completed the review and found that the debt had been raised correctly. After making several unsuccessful attempts to contact her that day, the agency did not attempt to contact her again. The first the woman heard of the review outcome was when a debt collection agency told her she had three days to pay the debt.
- Unreasonable delay. After a person complained to a relevant agency that she considered her employer was breaching legislation, her employer found out and terminated her employment. The person complained to the agency that she was being victimised, but it took the agency five months to decide whether she was a whistleblower and should be afforded the statutory protections available to her.
- Procedural deficiency. A person sent a request for a review to an agency, using a post office box listed on the agency's pamphlet. The agency had stopped using the post office box, and had put a mail redirection service in place. However, it failed to renew the redirection service, and mail sent to the old post office box was returned to sender. As a result of her request not being received, the person suffered financial detriment.
- Flawed administrative process. An agency charged an organisation for processing a particular application. When the agency first advised the organisation of the likely cost it underestimated the amount, and then failed to advise the organisation as the costs escalated substantially. The agency was also not able to provide an itemised account of the costs incurred.
- Unreasonable/harsh/discriminatory action or decision. A person applied for a benefit. As part of his application he gave details about traumatic events that had occurred about 10 years previously, when he was six years old. The decision maker refused the application on the papers on the basis that the credibility of the person's claims was compromised by lack of sufficient relevant information and some discrepancies. The decision maker did not seek further information. We considered this was unreasonable, given the age of the person at the time of the traumatic events, and the time that had passed since they occurred.
- Resource deficiency in agency. An agency accepted applications for a benefit online. In some cases it needed to contact a third party, but its computer system was unable to generate the required communications. A person complained to us about the problem several years ago, and at that time the agency advised it would fix the problem. However, the agency only resolved part of the problem and it was unable to diagnose the cause of the remaining problems. The person complained to us again when the problem recurred and processing of another application was delayed.
- Inadequate knowledge/training of staff. An agency raised a debt against a person. He asked for the debt to be withdrawn within the required timeframe. His request was dealt with by a new, inexperienced officer who was not aware of the timeframe and declined his request. The agency then raised additional charges against the person for late payment of the debt. He contacted the agency again and spoke to the same officer, who agreed to waive the additional charges, but did not record this correctly on the agency's computer system. As a result, further late payment penalties were raised against the person.
- Deficiency arising from the interaction of Australian Government programs. An agency intermittently re–started taking deductions from a person's payments made by a second agency, after the legal requirement for the deductions had ended. The problem arose because of a systems error between the two computer systems the agencies used.
- Unreasonable or harsh government policy. A person was initially denied a benefit related to his vehicle because it was registered in a state different to that where he was deemed to reside. In fact the person had no state of residence because he travelled constantly with his work. When the policy was developed, this situation had not been envisaged.
- Unprofessional behaviour by an officer. A person who was living temporarily overseas sent a fax to an agency asking it to review a decision. Most of the fax did not transmit properly, as was clearly evident. Although the person had recently provided the agency with his postal, telephone and email contact details while he was overseas, the agency officer did not attempt to contact him about the fax and made a review decision, affirming the original decision, based on the information at hand.
Top
Previous
page | Next page—Chapter 8–Ombudsmen—200 years of service