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Statement of Intent 2015/19

Ombudsman:
Dame Beverley Wakem
Issue date:
Format:
PDF
Word
Language:
English

The Ombudsmen are appointed by Parliament to give effect to a number of key democratic 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:

  • specific interventions in relation to individual complaints about administrative conduct and access to information that we receive from members of the public; and

  • more general interventions to investigate and inspect significant and systemic issues and to provide advice and guidance, with the aim of contributing to wider administrative improvement in the state sector.

We operate in an environment where our stakeholders have high expectations, and there is an ever-changing demand for our services. Our functions and workload have been progressively increasing, and we need to remain relevant and able to respond in a rapidly evolving model of public service delivery.

To ensure that we can provide effective and efficient interventions that make the best use of available resources, we are operating under a revised business model in a process of continuous practice improvement. This model preserves our practices that have stood the test of time, but realigns them to meet current business needs and better reflect our overall purpose and strategic direction.

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