Confidentiality
Information: Under section 29A of the Ombudsman Act 1972 (external site) (PDF), strict confidentiality provisions apply to information a person receives about an Ombudsman SA complaint or report.
Ombudsman SA complaints, reports and investigations are confidential, and information must not be shared without permission.
If the Ombudsman considers that it is in the public interest, parties may be authorised to disclose assessment outcomes and investigation reports. The Ombudsman may also decide to publish an assessment outcome or investigation report, having regard to our policies. Transparency promotes an understanding of the Ombudsman’s views and may promote improvements in public administration.
See our Frequently Asked Questions for more information about sharing details of my compaint.
Unless the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2018 applies, we will disclose your identity to an agency for the purposes of assessing and investigating the complaint.
- If you do not want to be identified to the agency, please let us know when making the complaint.
- If you do so, we will not disclose your identity unless we consider it necessary to properly assess and investigate your complaint.
- If we consider it is necessary to disclose your identity in that situation, we will let you know beforehand.
In most cases, the agency will be notified of the complaint and the outcome. You should advise Ombudsman SA if you consider there is good reason why this information should not be disclosed to the relevant agency.
See our Frequently Asked Questions for more information about how we treat your identity.
Our process
What you can expect when making a complaint.
Tell us what has happened
We receive your complaint and acknowledge it within three business days.
We look into your complaint
Many complaints can be fixed by us contacting the relevant organisation.
We may look into your complaint further
We'll see if we can resolve your complaint and if not whether we should investigate.
You receive an outcome
We reach a decision and contact you about the outcome.
How we handle complaints
Assessment
We assess all complaints to determine whether to investigate. We may contact you for more details and to clarify issues. We may refer the complaint to an agency for that agency to deal with and monitor how the agency deals with the complaint.
If the Ombudsman does not intend to take further action on your complaint, we let you know why and give you the opportunity to comment.
Notification to the agency
We invite the agency to respond to the complaint. We then review the agency’s response and consider whether to take further action. We may disclose your identity to an agency for the purposes of assessing and investigating the complaint.
Early resolution
We may try to resolve the matter with the agency’s cooperation, whether formally or informally. In most cases, the agency will be notified of the complaint and the outcome.
Investigation
If there is no early resolution, and a matter meets our public interest criteria for investigation, we formally investigate the matter. While we have broad investigation powers, investigations may involve:
- seeking a written response from the agency
- assessing documents
- interviewing witnesses.
Provisional view
The Ombudsman forms a provisional view about whether there has been error by the agency. We give parties who may be affected by the provisional view a chance to comment (i.e. procedural fairness) before forming a final view.
Final view and recommendation
If the Ombudsman considers that the agency has made an error, we make recommendations to address the error, and we notify the relevant Minister.
Reports to other authorities
We may have to report matters raised in your complaint to another authority.
If the information gives us a reasonable suspicion of corruption in public administration, we must report it to the Office for Public Integrity (external site)
We are also required to make reports under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2018.
