The Ombudsmen are appointed by Parliament to give effect to a number of key democratic and human rights measures aimed at safeguarding the rights of individuals and promoting government accountability and transparency. In essence, we investigate, review and inspect the administrative conduct of state sector agencies and provide advice and guidance, in order to ensure people are treated fairly in New Zealand.
The activities we carry out are balanced between:
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specific interventions in relation to the individual complaints about administrative conduct and access to information that we receive from members of the public; and
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more general interventions to investigate and inspect significant and systemic issues, review and monitor compliance and good practice, and provide advice and guidance, with the aim of contributing to wider administrative improvement in the state sector.
The next four years will see a consolidation of our approach, and the targeted investment of resources, to ensure that our complaint handling practices are sound, flexible and timely, and the expansion of our general interventions is undertaken in a principled and effective manner. In doing so, we will take full advantage of our practices that have stood the test of time over the past 50 years, and the recent and ongoing revisions to our business model in a process of continuous practice improvement.
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