CHAPTER 4Management and accountability

Corporate governance

Senior executive and responsibilities

The Governor-General appointed Prof. John McMillan as Commonwealth Ombudsman in May 2003 and Mr Ron Brent as Deputy Ombudsman in June 2003. During 2005–06, a second Deputy Ombudsman position was created. Dr Vivienne Thom was appointed to the position in March 2006 for a five-year period. 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 organisational structure was further modified in June 2006, when a new Senior Assistant Ombudsman was appointed to manage the office's human resources, financial management, records management, information technology and professional standards teams.

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 2006, the office's senior management team and their areas of responsibility are:

Mr Ron Brent, Deputy Ombudsman—main areas of responsibility:

• Corporate—Ms Marilyn Prothero, Senior Assistant Ombudsman and Chief Finance Officer
  — corporate services comprising finance, human resources and records management
  — information technology and communications infrastructure
  — professional standards and special projects.
  
  
• Social Support and Legal—Ms Helen Fleming, Senior Assistant Ombudsman
  — specialised advice and complaint handling relating to the Department of Human Services (including Centrelink and the Child Support Agency) and relevant policy departments.
  — in-house legal advice and policy service to support staff in performing their functions.
  
  
• State and Territory Offices—Mr Ray Matcham, Senior Assistant Ombudsman
  — management and oversight of state and territory offices (Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney), which handle complaints and undertake some specialist work
  — complaint handling relating to the ACT Ombudsman function
  — Public Contact Team, which provides a national point of contact for all approaches to the office made by telephone, email or online form.

Dr Vivienne Thom, Deputy Ombudsman—main areas of responsibility:

• Immigration—Ms Mary Durkin, Senior Assistant Ombudsman
  — specialised advice and complaint handling relating to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs
  — reviewing the cases of detainees who have been held in immigration detention for two years or more
  — investigating immigration detention cases referred by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, concerning Australian citizens or other people lawfully in Australia who were held in immigration detention or may have been removed from Australia.
  
  
• Law Enforcement and Postal—Ms Vicki Brown, Senior Assistant Ombudsman
  — complaint handling and investigating law enforcement activities relating to Australian Government law enforcement agencies
  — inspecting the records of law enforcement agencies for statutory compliance, adequacy and comprehensiveness
  — specialised advice and complaint handling relating to Australia Post and registered postal operators of the Postal Industry Ombudsman scheme.
  
  
• Taxation, Defence and Public Affairs—Mr Damien Browne, Senior Assistant Ombudsman and Special Tax Adviser
  — specialised advice and complaint handling relating to the Australian Taxation Office
  — specialised advice and complaint handling relating to the Australian Defence Force, the Defence Housing Authority and the Department of Veterans' Affairs
  — public affairs and outreach, including management of the office's websites and international program.

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Corporate planning and review

During the year, we reviewed our strategic plan to build on achievements over the past three years and to reflect priorities for 2006–09. Strategic priorities identified for 2006–07 are to:

• consolidate the office's work practice changes introduced in 2005–06
• identify systemic issues for investigation
• continue to build the profile of the office
• increase the emphasis on timeliness, quality assurance and consistency in complaint handling
• exploit the efficiencies of our new complaints management system and work practices to target review of administrative decisions in key agencies.

The office's strategic plan informs its internal business plans. There are clear links between the objectives and the key measures of success of the strategic plan and the goals and directions set in the business plan for all teams and for staff members in their individual performance agreements. As a result, performance agreements are closely linked to business plans.

Management committees

Management committees assist the Executive with decision making in key areas.

Internal Audit Committee

As required by the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997, the office has an Internal Audit Committee. The committee met twice 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 process for monitoring compliance with legislation and government policy directives.

At 30 June 2006, the committee comprised Mr Ron Brent, Deputy Ombudsman (Chair), Ms Helen Fleming, Senior Assistant Ombudsman, Mr Ray Matcham, Senior Assistant Ombudsman, and Mr Joe D'Angelo, Chief Finance Officer, Department of the Senate.

Representatives of the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) and the office's internal auditor, Walter Turnbull, are invited to advise the committee on specific issues, as appropriate.

Information Technology Steering Committee

A Deputy Ombudsman chairs the Information Technology (IT) Steering Committee, which met four times during the year. The committee:

• oversees the development and maintenance of IT strategy and governance
• determines priorities and directions for infrastructure, application development and maintenance, and project development
• makes recommendations to the Ombudsman about major IT infrastructure decisions and major expenditure proposals.

Occupational Health and Safety Committee

The office's Occupational Health and Safety Committee is made up of elected representatives from each state office and is chaired by the Human Resources Manager, who represents management. The committee provides its recommendations and gives advice to the Workplace Relations Committee. The committee met twice during the year. Appendix 1 gives more information on occupational health and safety.

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.

Work Practice Steering Committee

The Work Practice Steering Committee was established in May 2006, with the first meeting held in June. A Deputy Ombudsman chairs the committee, which includes representatives from a number of specialist teams and state offices. The committee's role is to consider and make decisions on work practice-related issues and to provide recommendations and/or advice to the Executive, where appropriate.

Corporate governance practices

Risk management

The Internal Audit Committee oversights the office's risk management activities, which have been incorporated into the Ombudsman's planning and operations and the management of contractors. The office's risk management policy and procedures specify how to:

• create, maintain and continuously improve risk management standards
• establish, maintain and continuously improve a risk register
• help to prioritise and schedule risk control improvements in each of the office's cost centres
• report to the Internal Audit Committee and Executive on risk improvement and compliance
• raise awareness among staff about risk management.

The office participated in the annual Comcover Risk Management Benchmarking Survey, and feedback was provided to the Internal Audit Committee.

Business continuity planning

Changes to the office's information technology infrastructure delayed finalisation of the business continuity plan. The draft business continuity plan identifies and assesses risks that could disrupt services and functions and presents plans to avoid or minimise the impact of hazardous incidents. The plan will be finalised in 2006–07 and tested as part of its implementation.

Fraud prevention and control

The Ombudsman's office complies with the Commonwealth Fraud Control Guidelines through:

• undertaking a fraud risk assessment
• preparing a fraud control plan
• ensuring the appropriate fraud prevention, detection, investigation and reporting procedures are in place
• collecting and reporting annual fraud control data to the Attorney-General's Department.

The office reviewed its fraud risks and controls in 2004–05. The risk of fraud remains low.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman Certified Agreement 2005–2008 includes the Australian Public Service Values, as specified in s 10 of the Public Service Act 1999, and the values adopted by the Commonwealth Ombudsman's office in its Strategic Plan 2006–2009. The importance of the values is reinforced in induction documentation and training for staff and in internal documents, including the Workplace Diversity Plan and the Workplace Harassment Policy.

The key values of the Commonwealth Ombudsman's office are: independence, impartiality, integrity, accessibility, professionalism and teamwork.

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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 endeavour to meet our obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 through implementation of the Commonwealth Disability Strategy and the Ombudsman's Disability Action Plan 2005–2008 and Workplace Diversity Plan 2002–2006.

The office's operations encompass the activities of regulator, service provider and employer.

Regulator

The Ombudsman does not directly enforce the disability discrimination legislation, but provides a complaint-resolution service under statute for the Australian Government. This can include recommendations on enforcement of legislative obligations that apply to Australian Government agencies. 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 regularly liaise with community organisations to promote awareness of the Ombudsman's services.

Provider

The Ombudsman has an established internal complaints and review process, which allows complaints about the office's decisions and service quality to be resolved quickly, fairly and informally. The office's complaint and grievance mechanisms are set out in our Service Charter. We seek to promote awareness of the office's role and service in all areas of the Australian community.

An important element in redeveloping the Ombudsman's website in 2005–06 was to ensure that the site was accessible to as large a proportion of the community as possible. To achieve this we used the priority 1 and 2 checkpoints of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 as our benchmark. Activities included testing colour contrast for people with vision impairments, 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.

Employer

The Ombudsman's Workplace Diversity Plan aims to ensure that in working to achieve the goals of the office, the diverse background, skills, talents and views of staff are recognised, encouraged and valued, and that all staff are aware of the value of creating a culture of workplace diversity. The plan provides for the following measures to assist staff who have particular needs.

• All employment policies and procedures comply with the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and are communicated in a manner that is responsive to the needs of employees.
  
  
• Employment policies and procedures are made available in a format suitable to the needs of prospective employees. Appropriate material is provided in hard copy to prospective employees when they seek details of employment opportunities, as well as on the office's website in accessible formats.
  
  
• Managers and recruiters apply 'reasonable adjustment' principles.
  
  
• A flexible approach is applied to managing employees with special needs as provided in the workplace diversity plan.
  
  
• Training and development programs consider and respond to the needs of people with disabilities and include information on disability issues where they relate to the content of the program.
  
  
• Complaint and grievance mechanisms, including access to external mechanisms, are in place to address issues and concerns raised by staff and the public.

Environmental matters

Section 516A of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 requires the Ombudsman to report on 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. Policy guidance is provided on conservation of energy in use of lighting and computer equipment. Material sent for recycling includes toner/printer cartridges, paper and paper products, and classified waste.

Service charter

We are committed to providing the best service possible to the community. The Commonwealth Ombudsman Service Charter is available on our website. It outlines the service that can be expected from the office, ways to provide feedback and steps that can be taken if standards are not met.

Where a complainant disagrees with our conclusions and decision about a complaint, they may ask for the matter to be reconsidered, and if they are still not satisfied, for a review of how the investigation was conducted. A more senior officer not previously involved in the matter will conduct the review to determine whether the conclusion reached was reasonable, justified and adequately explained to the complainant. Only in exceptional circumstances will more than one review be undertaken. We report on reviews in Chapter 3—Performance report.

In last year's report we stated that we would review the office's service charter and the mechanisms for monitoring, responding to and recording complaints about our service. This review was held over until 2006–07 following the bedding down of the office's revised work practices and new complaints management system.

We report against timeliness in complaint handling in Chapter 3—Performance report.