Provisional Topics 2009-10

The Management of Personal Information by State Government Agencies and Local Governments

Members of the community are required by statute to provide personal information to State government agencies and local governments for a range of reasons.  Legislation allows agencies to share this personal information with each other and to disclose it to third parties in certain circumstances.  The way in which agencies manage this information and recent examples of its unauthorised use and release, have become an ongoing source of community concern and complaint.  The Ombudsman has therefore decided to conduct a pilot study to determine how well agencies comply with good practice principles for the management of personal information.

The Effective Administration of Complaint Handling Systems

The Ombudsman’s practice is to refer complainants back to agencies in the first instance.  However two previous surveys of public sector complaint handling systems found that very few agencies complied with national standards.  As an outcome of the proposed investigation, the Ombudsman would have better knowledge of the effectiveness of complaint management systems to which it refers complainants and which systems can be relied on to deal effectively with complaints.