The Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman has issued a new factsheet to help Departments and Agencies understand and act on its reports.
In a statement, Ombudsman, Michael Manthorpe said that by conducting inspections, his office aimed to influence improvements in Agencies’ compliance with the law when using covert, intrusive or coercive powers.
“Each inspection usually concludes with a meeting where we explain the issues we have identified, but the subsequent written report is the formal record of our findings,” Mr Manthorpe said.
“It provides information to support our findings and may give an Agency suggestions or recommendations about remedying existing issues and/or preventing recurrences.”
He said the reports helped his office track issues at an Agency over time, as well as across Agencies and regimes.
“We conduct our inspections under several Acts, some of which require the Ombudsman to prepare periodic reports about his office’s activities,” Mr Manthorpe said.
He said the office prepared different types of reports — statutory (published); ad hoc (may be published) and ‘own motion’ investigations (may be published).
“Our reports begin with details about our inspection. This generally includes when we did the inspection; the team(s) we worked with; the number and, where relevant, the type of records that were available and the number and, where relevant, the type, of records that we inspected,” Mr Manthorpe said.
“As an introduction, we summarise any improvements we identified since our last report. They include a table of our findings. Findings are our conclusions based on what we observed during our inspection.”
He said the reports were not legal advice; they were the Ombudsman’s assessment of an Agency’s compliance with legislative requirements.
However, Agencies had to consider all the Ombudsman’s suggestions and recommendations and be prepared to provide the Ombudsman with information about improvements they had or would make to act on the findings.
The Ombudsman’s six-page fact sheet can be accessed at this PS News link.
