Through the Commonwealth Ombudsman Annual Report, we meet parliamentary reporting requirements and provide information to the community about the complaints handled by our office and our other activities to improve public administration.
Our report contains information that is relevant for 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 direct you to the sections that will be the most useful. The foreword provides a broad summary of the year.
The 2014-15 Commonwealth Ombudsman Annual Report has two major sections: "About us", which includes corporate information, and "What we do", which provides information about our activities over the past year. This is supplemented by a references section and appendixes.
About us
This section describes our:
- roles and functions
- organisational structure
- senior management team
- corporate governance
- ecological and environmental performance
- external scrutiny
- people management
- financial management
- purchasing.
What we do
This section provides information about our work in our major areas of responsibility, including:
- Performance report - our objectives, deliverables and key performance indicators
- Complaint-handling overview, including own motion reports
- Social services - Centrelink and Child Support
- Australia Post
- Australian Taxation Office
- Immigration
- Overseas Students Ombudsman
- Defence
- Law enforcement and inspections (compliance auditing)
- Public Interest Disclosure scheme
- International - our role within the international community of ombudsmen.
Departments and agencies were given the opportunity to comment on those draft sections of this report that relate to their organisations.
Appendixes
The appendixes include information about:
- the Information Publication Scheme
- statistics on the number of approaches and complaints received about individual Australian Government agencies
- additional reporting on the Postal Industry Ombudsman
- agency resource statement
- financial statements.
A list of tables and figures contained in the body of the report is also included under References, while a glossary, 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 Manager, Communication, 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:
Visit our website at:
www.ombudsman.gov.au where you can complete an online complaint form.
Phone:
1300 362 072 from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
(Note: this is not a toll-free number and calls from mobile phones are charged at mobile phone rates.)
Write to:
GPO Box 442, Canberra ACT 2601.
This report is available on our website.