Preface Based on the Austrian Federal Constitution, the Austrian Ombudsman Board (Volksanwaltschaft) has independently and impartially controlled national, state and municipal public administration since 1977. Once a year, its members submit a report to the National Council and the Federal Council outlining the institution’s work, priorities and main findings throughout the past year. The present volume is a short version of the annual report 2009 compiled in German and consists of a general section, which outlines the activities of the three members of the Austrian Ombudsman Board. All key data, such as statistics on investigative proceedings and the number of cases, can be found in this section. Section two gives an overview of the international activities of the institution, which covers a broad range from the International Ombudsman Institute (I.O.I.) to EU twinning projects and bilateral contacts. Since 2001, the Austrian Ombudsman Board has been putting a particular emphasis on human rights in its annual report. Therefore section three of the report deals with legal problems relating to human rights, which the Austrian Ombudsman Board had to resolve in 2009 when assessing complaints about administrative malfunction and administrative offenses of legal provisions by public authorities. Both the original report written in German and the English translation are available free of charge from the office of the Austrian Ombudsman Board (Volksanwaltschaft) and can be downloaded from the institution’s website www.volksanw.gv.at . Peter Kostelka Vienna, August 2010 Gertrude Brinek Terezija Stoisits