2012 at the Ombudsman Institution The special issues in relation to local authorities’ combating of social benefit fraud, on which we have used considerable resources, are also discussed elsewhere in the Annual Report (pages 40-47). There is little doubt that the local authorities are finding it difficult on the one hand to target fraud and unwarranted payments aggressively and on the other to observe fundamental principles concerning, for instance, objective case elucidation, self-incrimination and the obligation to give guidance. This is an area which we will continue to monitor carefully. Several cases reflected the issues involved in transitioning to IT based (digital) administration. This applied, for instance, to Case No. 2012-4, where misfiling at the National Board of Industrial Injuries resulted in several citizens obtaining insight into very sensitive information about other people via online insight systems. This is one of many issues that may arise when transitioning to digital case processing systems. After we raised the issue more generally, the Board has now implemented various initiatives to prevent such very unfortunate situations. Another example (Case No. 2012-14) concerned state education grants to Danish students who complete their studies (fully or in part) abroad. In a specific case, a woman studying in Australia lost money because the State Education Grant and Loan Scheme Authority had organised its IT system in such a way that the conversion of the foreign tuition fee to state education grant could only be done on the basis of the exchange rates as at 1 April. The system therefore did not take account of exchange rate fluctuations during the year. We found this method contrary to the law and the Authority therefore had to initiate a general refund of costs to students who had lost money as a result of the system. The issue of the freedom of expression of public employees has traditionally been an important part of the Ombudsman’s activity and we also processed several important cases in 2012. They concerned the boundaries between legitimate management reactions to legal statements, on the one hand, and illegal intervention and restrictions, on the other. In a case (Case No. 2012-25) from Region Zealand, some nurses at Nykøbing Falster Hospital had spoken publicly about staff quotas at the hospital and their impact on the mortality statistics. In this connection, the Chairman of the Regional Council had said to a newspaper that ‘staff and politicians have a joint responsibility here, and I strongly urge that we cooperate on reducing those mortality figures instead of discussing them in the press’. The Danish Nurses’ Organisation regarded this as an infringement of the nurses’ freedom of expres- 15