Introduction The AOB monitors and controls the administration of the Federal Government and its activities as holder of private rights. The AOB also functions as regional ombudsman board in seven of Austria’s federal Laender. With this Annual Report, the AOB is informing the members of the National and the Federal Council about the observations it made at the federal level in the working year 2011. The results of its monitoring and ex-post control at the regional and the municipal level are available in the reports to the respective Diets. In order to provide a proper basis for the activities of the AOB described in this report, we would like to briefly touch on its historical development. In 1971, the Federal Chancellery sent out a draft law on a “Federal Administration Advocacy Institution” (Bundesverwaltungsanwaltschaft), which could be obtained from the Austrian State Printing Office. The interest of the population in the creation of an ombudsman institution appeared to be very high, as 13,000 copies of this publication were requested. After intensive and contentious academic and political discussions, the Federal Ombudsman Board Act (Bundesgesetz über die Volksanwaltschaft) was enacted on 24 February 1977. 1977 Establishment of the AOB In other words, the AOB was explicitly not conceived as a “legal protection institution in the technical sense of the term”. In the materials for the government bill from 1976, it says: “Although Austria’s legal protection system is, without a doubt, highly developed, one cannot overlook the fact that there are various areas where existing legal protection institutions do not and cannot suffice to fight real or alleged injustice. The very wise saying fiat justitia pereat mundus (“Let justice be done, though the world perish”), which is frequently happily ignored, particularly in Austria, expresses that the protection of law alone can never satisfy all the needs of the human being, who is, after all, not only a legal entity but a living being with very individual worries and hardships. If one wishes, one can designate this attempt to humanise the monitoring and investigative functions as a “political” role of the ombudsman, who thus adds a new element to public administration under the rule of law.” Objective of the AOB 9