The Commonwealth Ombudsman has fallen significantly short of its service standards in the past year, achieving only 24 per cent of its target of 90 per cent. 

This revelation comes from the Ombudsman's annual report, which highlights its commitment to being responsive to public inquiries.

In the 2021-22 period, the Ombudsman's responsiveness rate stood at 47 per cent, a decline from the previous year's 78 per cent. 

The report cites the COVID-19 pandemic as a primary cause of the backlog of complaints, resulting in extended response times that exceeded their set timeframes.

Efforts to address the backlog included the recruitment of additional staff, though this required diverting resources from other underfunded roles within the office.

Iain Anderson, Commonwealth Ombudsman, has acknowledged the need for clear and straightforward interactions with concerned individuals and outlined measures taken to enhance service delivery, including a new telephone complaint handling system, surge teams, triage processes to tackle backlogs, and the development of a new knowledge information system known as VOLT.

The Ombudsman says it remains committed to monitoring and improving its complaint-handling services closely.

The annual report reveals that the Ombudsman failed to meet several key targets, including satisfaction rates in complainant surveys (38 per cent) and the perceived independence of the Ombudsman in surveys (44 per cent), both falling short of their 65 per cent targets.

However, the Ombudsman did manage to meet or exceed other performance targets, with 89 per cent of recommendations in public reports accepted by agencies (surpassing the 75 per cent target) and a 93 per cent satisfaction rate among agencies regarding the quality of the Ombudsman's work, exceeding the 80 per cent goal.

The full report is accessible in PDF form, here.