06 Jan 2015: Ombudsman says agencies should take responsibility for mistakes

The Commonwealth Ombudsman, Colin Neave, today released an abridged version of his report Avoiding, acknowledging and fixing mistakes: investigation of a complaint about the Australian Community Pharmacy Authority

The report concerns a complaint about the Pharmacy Location Program, which was delivered across two federal agencies: the Department of Health and the Department of Human Services. Both agencies have responded positively to the recommendations made by the Ombudsman.

Mr Neave said that although the investigation concerned a peculiar set of circumstances arising in a particular program, it resulted in broader lessons for government agencies about sharing information between agencies that jointly administer a program, and for taking responsibility for fixing mistakes.

“What I found disappointing in this investigation was the failure by the agencies to work together to either fix the mistake or, after it could not be fixed, to deal openly with the complainant,” Mr Neave said.

“Even where a mistake cannot be fixed, agencies should still take responsibility for it, explain what happened and apologise for any error.”

In this instance, one agency did not have a fully developed approach to service recovery and complaint handling, while the other did not have all of the necessary information in time to enable it to handle the complaint properly.

“Few programs can be delivered perfectly all of the time. Good administrative practice considers how to recover service delivery errors and how to respond to complainants,” Mr Neave said.

“However, I am pleased with the responses from both departments to the recommendations in this report, and thank them and their staff for their cooperation during the investigation.”

The Ombudsman will provide no further comment on the report.

The report is available at www.ombudsman.gov.au.

Media contact: Media 02 6276 3759

Date of release: 6 January 2015