IOI more sustainable by extending the terms of office of the officials. After a transparent consultation process, which included all the members of the IOI, the General Assembly in Wellington adopted the final draft of the By-Laws with a clear majority of 96.3%. While there were practically no trainings up to 2009, the training offerings for the staff of ombudsman institutions has been greatly Expansion of training offerings increased worldwide. In September 2012, due to lively demand, the IOI General Secretariat again hosted an ombudsman training that brought 36 interested participants from ombudsman institutions in 23 different countries to Vienna. Well-respected trainers from the Queen Margaret University (QMU) in Scotland presented an interactive workshop on how to deal effectively with complaints. In 2012, with assistance from the City of Vienna, the IOI gave subsidies to financially weaker institutions. Staff members from ombudsman institutions from Sierra Leone, Botswana, Pakistan, Ukraine and Lithuania were thus able to participate in this highly valuable training. For 2013, four additional IOI trainings have been scheduled (including locations in Africa and Asia). Funding from the IOI membership fees can not only provide financing for trainings in Austria, but can also subsidise (supra)regional (Supra)regional projects projects organised by IOI member institutions. For example, using an innovative training tool, a webinar (an Internet-based seminar) has been developed in the North American Region on the subject of how to deal properly with complaints by persons from different generations. A series of trainings on effective complaint management and conduct in difficult situations surrounding complaints, which was organised by the institutions in Hong Kong and Macao in May 2012, was directed toward participants from the APOR Region. Additionally, the IOI enabled simultaneous interpretation into French of a training about dealing with difficult complainants, held by the Forum of Canadian Ombudsman (FCO) in November 2012 in Montreal. In his function as IOI General Secretary, Ombudsman Peter Kostel- Cooperation with the IACA ka signed a Memorandum of Understanding in November 2012 with the International Anti-Corruption Academy (IACA), which is headquartered in Laxenburg. A jointly organised training focused on anticorruption will be offered to IOI members in fall 2013. In the area of science and research, the IOI was able to take an impor- Science and research tant step closer to its goal of making comparative analyses of ombudsman institutions worldwide available for everyone on the IOI website. After the study about European ombudsman institutions that was 95