Office of the Ombudsman - Office of the Ombudsman House Level 7/70 The Terrace

10/10 great place

Absolutely terrible. The caviar wasn’t even delivered to your room for free.

They do a super important job for NZ, protecting our democracy.

A Crown org that lies to the people of NZ and says its "independent" from the Crown NZ govt. How can it be? Its a Crown org! Basically the Ombudsman office is a "coverup " org for govt that either ignores the Crown's crimes and/or lies to cover them up. its great when you make a serious complaint and the office does not even respond, which is in breach of Ombudsman Act , which I might add the Ministry of Justice does not administer ( even though it is suppose to). What a farce.

The OOTO was useful for helping me to get hold of official information under the OIA from an organisation. The person I spoke to for that was reasonable and helpful. Unfortunately my experience with making a complaint about an organisations decision under the OA was not so helpful. After I complained to the OOTO the organisation whose decision I complained about told the OOTO that they were responding to a couple of letters I had written over a month ago. The OOTO told me to wait for the response. I waited 6 more weeks and there was no indication from the organisation of when I would get a response, so I wrote to the OOTO again saying I could not wait indefinitely and I felt the decision needed reviewing regardless of the organisation's response because I had already advocated my case to the organisation between their provisional and final decisions. I did not get much response from the OOTO at this point. I waited 5 months before the organisation responded to my earlier letters and the response was, in my opinion, just a re-hashing of their previous arguments. The very next day the OOTO wrote to me saying that since the organisation had apologised and responded they assumed that my complaint could be closed. I then had to write a further letter with my ongoing concerns about the decision. Several more weeks passed and I received a letter that from the OOTO reiterating points made by the organisation and stating the limited scope of the OOTO to review decisions. I was quite unsatisfied and did not feel that the OOTO had investigated the decision-making process or really engaged with me to fully understand my concerns. I understand that they are a limited organisation that covers a large scope and I am sure that there are other aspects of their role that are very useful, but I did not find my experience of the OA useful at all and I felt that I had been led to believe that there was a system in place for investigation of decision-making processes by this organisation when this did not really eventuate. Perhaps I could have phrased my concerns better/differently, but I am not sure that would have made a difference. They seemed keen to close the complaint and by then I was jaded from going through multiple processes regarding the original issue and felt that further communication with the OOTO at that stage would probably not be useful. I am concerned that it is difficult for members of the public to phrase their OA complaints in terms of decision making 'process' as the OOTO defines it because there is not much guidance around this, and this could lead to issues being overlooked without further clarification.