Organisation Task and Jurisdiction
Task
The National Ombudsman's main task is to investigate the actions of administrative authorities and decide whether or not they were proper. He has the jurisdiction to do so. There are two avenues that can lead to an investigation: a petition or an initiative of the ombudsman himself. This last option provides the opportunity to focus on problems of a more structural kind in the practices of administrative authorities. This can be done either as an extension of investigations into specific cases or as a separate investigation in its own right.
Jurisdiction over administrative authorities
The task of the National Ombudsman is to investigate the actions of administrative authorities as defined by the General Administrative Law Act. For this purpose, any act carried out by a public servant in the performance of his/her duties is deemed to have been carried out by the administrative authority under whose responsibility he/she is working. The jurisdiction of the National Ombudsman includes the actions of government ministers and administrative authorities charged with duties relating to the police. In addition, his jurisdiction also includes all other administrative authorities that are not hierarchically subordinate to a government minister and not administrative authorities of the provinces, municipalities, water boards and bodies set up under the Joint Arrangements Act. This category of ‘other administrative authorities' includes the autonomous administrative authorities.
In practice, just under a fifth of all petitions received are judged to be inadmissible because they relate to administrative authorities which fall outside the jurisdiction of the National Ombudsman. The petitioners concerned receive a written explanation of the reasons why the complaint cannot be accepted for investigation and are referred, if possible, to an appropriate alternative body.
Jurisdiction over actions
The remit of the National Ombudsman does not encompass every kind of action by the administrative authorities specified in the preceding section as falling within his jurisdiction. It covers only the manner in which they implement government policies. Read more about the jurisdiction over different actions.