Commonwealth Ombudsman Annual Report 2012—13 | Guide
Guide to the Report
Through the Commonwealth Ombudsman Annual Report, we aim to meet parliamentary reporting requirements and to provide information to the community about the complaints handled by our office and our other activities.
Target audiences for our report include members of parliament, Australian Government departments and agencies, other ombudsman offices, the media, potential employees and consultants, and the wider public. As some parts of the report will be of more interest to you than others, this page may help you to work out which sections will be the most useful. The Foreword provides a broad summary of the year.
Performance Overview
Chapter 1 – Organisation Overview gives an outline of our role and responsibilities and the organisation’s structure.
Chapter 2 – Report on Performance summarises our performance based on the outcomes and program structure set out in our Portfolio Budget Statements and the Portfolio Additional Estimates Statements for 2012–13.
Chapter 3 – Management and Accountability describes our activities in corporate governance, people management and financial management.
The Ombudsman at Work
Chapter 4 – Agencies Overview assesses our work with our top five complaint agencies, and provides an overview of complaints and other approaches to our office.
Chapter 5 – Case Studies provides real-life examples of remedies achieved for individual complainants and examples of remedies that resulted in improved administration. Individual complaints can highlight a broader administrative problem that may affect many people. In these cases, the Ombudsman may recommend that an Australian Government agency implement a systemic change or improvement that might include such things as staff training or changing a process or procedure. These case studies show how we have improved aspects of administration.
Chapter 6 – Investigations, Reports and Submissions summarises our published reports and submissions.
Chapter 7 – Specialist and Other Roles reports on our specialist oversight functions. This covers the Defence Force Ombudsman, the Law Enforcement Ombudsman, the Immigration Ombudsman, the Taxation Ombudsman, the Postal Industry Ombudsman and the Overseas Students Ombudsman. This chapter also reports on our compliance auditing activities and our role within the international community of Ombudsmen.
Heads of departments and agencies were given the opportunity to comment on those draft sections of this report that relate to their organisations.
Appendixes and References
The appendixes include:
- freedom of information reporting
- statistics on the number of approaches and complaints received about individual Australian Government agencies
- a list of consultants engaged during the year
- our financial statements.
A list of tables and figures contained in the body of the report is also included on page 185, while a glossary and list of abbreviations, and the address of each of our offices, is included towards the end of the report.
Contacting the Ombudsman
Enquiries about this report should be directed to the Director, Governance and Business Improvement, Commonwealth Ombudsman (by email to ombudsman@ombudsman.gov.au).
If you would like to make a complaint or obtain further information about the Ombudsman, you can do one of the following things: