Of 318 complaints that the Public Service received from the Ombudsman’s Office in 2021, more than 85% were considered successfully closed by the Ombudsman or by his commissioners until the end of October 2022.
This is the highest rate of cases closed by this institution since the Public Service started carrying out this governance exercise in the past years.
The rest of the cases were pending with the Ombudsman (8.8%), with the ministries (3.5%), or referred to the Prime Minister (2.2%).
In the absolute majority of closed cases (93%), the investigations were closed by the Ombudsman without a recommendation being given. This shows that the Public Service either acted correctly or addressed the complaint as soon as it received the case from the Ombudsman, and thus there was no need for the investigation to continue.
This emerged from a new publication launched by Principal Permanent Secretary Tony Sultana. The report published today gives an account of each case, with details on what actions were taken. An account is also given of pending cases from previous years.
This report was launched during an internal conference organized by the Public Service for Permanent Secretaries and liaison officers involved in this process, with the aim that monitoring, and governance continue to be strengthened – despite the high implementation rates.
Principal Permanent Secretary Tony Sultana said that all this testifies to the commitment of the Public Service to, while continuing to modernize its structures and procedures, maintain the highest level of governance and accounting expected of it.
The publication ‘Governance Action on the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Annual Report 2021’ is available on the site publicservice.gov.mt.