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KASAMA Vol. 21 No. 3 / July-August-September 2007 / Solidarity Philippines Australia Network
 

Commonwealth Ombudsman’s 10 Lessons for Public Administration
 

The Australian Commonwealth Ombudsman gave a presentation at a seminar in August this year where he reported on the government review of 247 immigration cases and outlined some lessons for public administration as a result.
 

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The lessons are clear and concise. Following them will go a long way to reduce errors that are the consequence of systemic administrative problems. His 10 lessons were:

  1. Maintain accurate, comprehensive and accessible records.
  2. Place adequate controls on the exercise of coercive powers.
  3. Actively manage unresolved and difficult cases.
  4. Heed the limitations of information technology systems.
  5. Guard against erroneous assumptions.
  6. Control administrative drift.
  7. Remove obstacles to prudent information exchange with other agencies and bodies.
  8. Promote effective communication in your own agency.
  9. Manage complexity in decision making.
  10. Check for warning signs of bigger problems.

He mentioned that the last lesson is probably the most important. The immigration cases of Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez Solon showed that flaws in an individual decision can highlight a much larger problem. Agencies should not wait for a crisis to eventuate but internally monitor and have good quality control and complaint handling procedures. Warning signs can then be picked up more easily and change initiated early.

You can download the full text of Lessons for public administration: Ombudsman investigation of referred immigration cases at http://www.ombudsman.gov.au/commonwealth/publish.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/reports_2007_11/$FILE/report_2007_11.pdf

For a round up of reports published in Kasama about Vivian Alvarez Solon’s case visit this page on the SPAN/CPCA web site http://cpcabrisbane.org/CPCA/VivianAlvarezSolon.htm