12 ANNUAL REPORT 2011 Thirdly, the Ombudsman must as far as possible be constructive and forwardlooking. As already mentioned, the Ombudsman’s main task is obviously to investigate whether the authorities have acted wrongly, and naturally he must take action when the administration’s actions are open to criticism. Fundamentally, however, the Ombudsman must be a team-player in the overall public law system – a kind of backstop contributing to the optimisation of legality, administrative culture and respect for human rights. The Ombudsman should thus ideally be both the administration’s ‘evil spirit and good fairy’, as this is the best and most effective way to fulfil his core function of being a safeguard for citizens who believe they have been wrongly or unfairly treated by the authorities. In the coming years, the Ombudsman institution is facing a number of important issues: One issue relates to the resources available to the public administration. Recently, both central and local authorities have experienced considerable cuts, and nothing suggests that this will change for some time. In the coming years, it will therefore be a very important task for the administration to prioritise and administer effectively so that the resource situation does not affect core services more than absolutely necessary. Here, the Ombudsman can be said to have a double task. On the one hand, it is important that the Ombudsman does not, for instance, impose greater demands on formalities in the administration’s case processing than is warranted with reasonable certainty by legislation or the principles of good administrative practice. As is well known, the same money cannot be spent twice, and if it is spent on process and formalities, it cannot also be spent on the core service. Here, the Ombudsman must be aware of the resource-­ related consequences of the demands he imposes on the administration. On the other hand, the Ombudsman has an equally important task in monitoring that the core service is actually provided to the extent stipulated by legislation and, not least, with the necessary speed. Here, it is not the Ombudsman’s task to help the authorities, in a way quite the contrary. The Ombudsman must help to ensure that citizens get the services to which they are entitled and make the authorities be open, to the relevant extent, about any reductions of their ­service level within the legislative framework. Ultimately, a potential fundamental tension between the available resources and citizens��� entitlements according to the rules has to be resolved by the legislature and not by either the administration or the Ombudsman.