12 Annual Report 2010 authority, this is not a dismissal case within the administration, and the rules concerning the hearing of parties laid down in section 19 of the Public Administration Act do not apply. Nonetheless, good administrative practice implies that the employee should be heard in such a situation (Annual Report of the Parliamentary Ombudsman, 2009, Case No. 1-1). In this connection, the employee should also be informed which decision or reaction the authority has in mind (for instance dismissal or a warning), so as to be able to take this into account in his/her statement before the final decision is made. Group B also involves good administrative practice as an extension of rules of law – now not in connection with a specific case, but as a general standard of behaviour. As an example the prohibition against accepting gifts can be mentioned. Of course this prohibition can be regarded as an extension of the rules prohibiting the acceptance of bribes, but it is also related to the rules of law concerning disqualification. The statutory rules concerning disqualification have not only been established to prevent subjective and therefore wrong decisions. They also have the wider objective of helping to establish confidence that the administration is not in­ fluenced by extraneous considerations, that it is impartial. Here, the disqualification rules are extended by the standards of good administrative practice preventing public employees from receiving gifts from citizens. If they did, this would reduce confidence in the administration’s impartiality and, in the worst case, also affect the objectivity of the decisions. ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICE NOT LINKED TO RULES OF LAW Guidelines concerning case processing times are an important example of group C – good administrative practice when processing specific cases involving citizens, but usually not linked to existing rules of law. Whether the case processing time is too long depends on various circumstances, above all the nature of the case. It is therefore usually impossible to set specific deadlines for how long the processing of a case may take. However, the principles of good administrative practice comprise other types of general directions on case processing time; for instance, a case should not remain untouched for a long time without any kind of action. If the case processing is protracted, the citizen must be informed of this and given a reason as well as an indication of when a decision is likely to be made, if possible. Reminders from the citizen must be answered.