Overview International conferences Ombudswoman Brinek attended the 9th National Seminar of the European Ombudsman Network in Dublin. The AOB was also present at the 9th Human Rights Forum in Lucerne, which focused on the key topic “Human Rights and Persons with Disabilities” and attended a conference in Strasbourg organised by the Council of Europe, on the development of human rights standards for detaining migrants. 2.4 The members of the AOB take stock 2.4.1 Ombudsman Günther Kräuter High expectations of the AOB The new members of the AOB started their work on 1 July 2013, and I - as the current Chairperson of the AOB - am looking forward to taking on responsibility for the AOB‘s further development together with Ombudswoman Gertrude Brinek and Ombudsman Peter Fichtenbauer. On the one hand, we must be fully committed to our core task as an independent institution handling citizens’ complaints. On the other hand, the OPCAT Implementation Act has created a new dynamic, which attracts great attention and high expectations. The development towards becoming the “Human Rights House of the Republic” has been formulated as a long-term target which we are progressing towards step by step in the next few years. Finally, I have been appointed Secretary General of the International Ombudsman Institute (IOI) and have been entrusted with the strategic tasks of the global network of ombudsman institutions. An “internal analysis” in the last three quarters of a year has revealed to me that our employees have excellent social and technical competences. On the one hand, the staff is strongly committed to performing continuing tasks as professionally as usual. On the other hand, a strong innovative and pioneering spirit is also present: A great interest in mastering those new areas which can only be achieved in group and team work. I would like to say thank you to all those involved. Complaint statistics do not reflect all problems 24 A look at the key figures for 2013 shows that the AOB received more complaints than ever before in its 37-year history. However, these figures are only meaningful to a limited extent, because not everyone who experiences problems with administration approaches the AOB. In particular, these figures cannot provide us with conclusions about problems in individual areas. For example, if in some Laender only a proportion of those potentially entitled to claim minimum benefit do so, then neither the number of complaints processed by the AOB nor any deficits identified are sufficiently reliable indicators for underlying, less tangible problems, which might also need to be resolved. What conclusions can the AOB draw from this? It is no doubt positive that more people are contacting the AOB. But this does not reduce the AOB‘s obligation to offer more target-group-based information and to make clear that it also feels responsible for the worries and existential needs of people who do not contact the AOB.