Ombudsman anno 2012
Another issue relates to the Ombudsman’s use of the institution’s own re
sources. The Ombudsman has a secretariat of approx. 90 employees and an
annual appropriation of approx. DKK 55 million. By contrast, the total public
administration has almost 800,000 employees and a huge budget. It is therefore
obvious that in the real world, the Ombudsman can only deal with a minute
proportion of the administration’s day-to-day activities.
In addition, the number of complaints lodged with the Ombudsman has been
steadily increasing for many years. Today, he receives approx. 5,000 per year.
The individual complainant usually has a quite natural expectation that his or
her case will be subjected to an in-depth investigation, and preferably by the
Ombudsman himself. At the same time, it is an important task for the Ombudsman not only to consider complaint cases, but also to take up cases for
investigation on his own initiative where there is reason for doing so (irrespective of whether they turn out to afford grounds for criticism or not). Equally
important are the inspections, where the Ombudsman visits institutions for
the most vulnerable groups in society, such as prisons, psychiatric wards and
residential institutions for children and young people, with a view to checking,
among other things, whether the relevant persons are treated in accordance
with the law and ordinary humanitarian standards. These activities are already
taking up significant resources and they will be further expanded in the autumn
when a special children’s office will presumably be established in the Ombudsman institution3. Finally, the Ombudsman also has other special tasks, such as
monitoring deportations of foreigners from Denmark.
As a result of all this, the Ombudsman has to prioritise ruthlessly in the coming years with regard to which cases he can take up, so that the institution’s resources are used in the best possible way. This, among other things, implies that
the Ombudsman has to carry out a tough screening of the individual complaint
cases and decline to consider them if it is unlikely that there is any real prospect that he will be able to criticise the authorities involved, or if the resources
required are not justified by the likely outcome of the case. Quite naturally, the
complainants affected may be dissatisfied when complaints are rejected, but the
alternative could easily be that the Ombudsman was unable to carry out any
of his tasks is an entirely satisfactory way, at least not within an even vaguely
reasonable time frame. And perhaps it is actually better for the individual complainant to be given a straight answer quickly instead of getting false hopes
because the Ombudsman is spending a long time on thorough investigations,
which do not in any case lead to the result desired by the complainant.
3 The necessary legislative basis for a children’s office has now been provided with the passage of the Amendment Act mentioned in note 2 on page 9.
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