How we manage complaints that are made after the issue has been resolved with the agency

Sometimes we receive complaints where the issue is already resolved.  For example, an individual may apply for a service from a Commonwealth Government agency, and while the agency approved their request, the individual has concerns about how the agency acted during the process.

We assess every complaint that we receive.  Our role is to provide assurance to the public that agencies act with integrity and treat people fairly. One of the ways that we do this is to focus on what we can do to improve things for as many people as possible, including into the future. This means that we do not investigate every individual complaint we receive.

When we receive complaints where the service has already been provided, or the issue has already been resolved by the agency, there are limited opportunities for us to achieve a better outcome for the individual complainant. For this reason, we will generally not investigate these complaints. However, there are some circumstances where we will take further action, even if the issue has been resolved.

Examples where we may further assess or investigate complaints where the issue has been resolved include, but are not limited to complaints that:

• indicate that the law may not have been followed
• suggest that the process was unfair or unreasonable or
• indicate that the actions of the agency in practice were very different from their policy and procedures.

While we may not investigate all complaints, the issues raised in every complaint are recorded in our systems which allows us to identify emerging trends and helps us decide our future activities.