CHAPTER 3Performance report

Output 1—Review of administrative action

1.7—Number of outreach activities

Our outreach program continues to have two components: to raise public awareness of our role; and to contribute to the development of the role of the Ombudsman in the Asia-Pacific region.

Raising public awareness

In March 2006, we commissioned a market research company to conduct a Public Awareness Benchmark Survey. The survey explored the level of knowledge of the role of the Ombudsman’s office among rural and regional Australians, as well as the depth of understanding of our role held by rural and regional community leaders.

We repeated the general survey of rural and regional Australians in June 2007. The results were broadly similar to those in 2006. The survey showed a continued high level of unprompted awareness of ‘the Ombudsman’ as an avenue to resolve complaints about Australian Government departments and agencies, although the overall percentage had decreased. It also showed ‘the Ombudsman’ was now the preferred avenue to resolve complaints. We are analysing the results in more detail to help better target our outreach activities.

We conducted 116 outreach activities during the year, which covered all states and territories. We continued to focus on community information ‘gatekeepers’, to inform them of our role and to listen to their concerns and observations about government service delivery.

We continued our program of seminars for federal members and electorate staff through the year, with sessions being held in each state.

In November 2005 an Indigenous Working Group was established within the office to consider the best way of communicating with, and providing service to, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islander people, communities and organisations. The group provided an interim report to the Ombudsman in mid-2006. The Ombudsman agreed to the report’s recommendations and we are working to implement them. More detail is included in Chapter 5—Challenges in complaint handling.

Role of Ombudsmen in the Asia-Pacific region

We continued our involvement in strengthening mutual support among Ombudsmen in our region. Key geographic areas for our international program involvement have been two South-East Asian neighbours, Indonesia and Thailand, and countries in the South Pacific, including Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Vanuatu. The Australian Agency for International Development provided funding for these activities. Further details about our international program are in Chapter 6—Promoting good administration.