26 annual report 2010 In October 2008, we forwarded the man’s complaint about the Immigration Service to the Ministry of Integration as the appeal authority and then considered the case closed. In June 2009, the Ministry made a decision on the case concerning the Immigration Service and sent the Ombudsman a copy. The Immigration Service had expressed regret to the Ministry for the very long case processing time and the sequence of events. The Ministry wrote to the man that it concurred in the Immigration Service’s expressions of regret. It also apologised for its own case processing time. Although the Ministry had now completed its case processing in relation to the man, the Ombudsman found grounds for initiating a case. We could see from the decision that the case had remained at a virtual standstill for almost eight months, and when we asked the Ministry about this matter, the Ministry confirmed that this was correct and regrettable. The reason was that the case had been handled by an employee who was absent due to illness for a long period of time. The case was not found when the office redistributed the employee’s cases – it was only found when the employee returned to work. As a result of the Ombudsman’s enquiry, the Ministry office in question tightened – and stressed the importance of observing – its internal procedures for dealing with a case worker’s long-term absence due to illness in relation to the cases handled by the employee. As a result, other citizens may in future avoid a similar situation. As the three above-mentioned examples show, specific cases may reveal problems of a more general nature. Of course it is important for the Ombudsman to help the individual citizen with the actual problems he or she has encountered in dealing with the public administration. Sometimes, however, the cases landing on the Ombudsman’s desk turn out to contain general problems which, when resolved, help to improve the public administration’s case processing. The improvements to which the Ombudsman has contributed since 1955 have thus happened in collaboration with the many citizens who have written to him over the years.