About us

The NSW Ombudsman is an independent and impartial watchdog body. Our job is to make sure that the public and private sector agencies and employees we watch over fulfil their functions properly. We help those agencies and their employees to be aware of their responsibilities to the public, to act reasonably and to comply with the law and best practice in administration.

We are independent of the government of the day and accountable to the public through the NSW Parliament. Our work is governed by a range of legislation including the Ombudsman Act 1974, the Community Services (Complaints, Reviews and Monitoring) Act 1993 and the Police Act 1990.

Our vision is to ‘see fair, accountable and responsive administrative practice and service delivery in NSW’. We work to promote good conduct, fair decision making, protection of rights and the provision of quality services. Our corporate goals reflect these objectives.

As directed by Parliament, we work with both the public sector and several thousand private agencies to achieve a number of results for the community including:

• fair, reasonable and transparent decision making
• improved provision of community services and protection of children
• improved public administration.

To achieve these results, our office helps agencies within our jurisdiction to address any problems that arise in the exercise of their functions and discharge of their responsibilities. We use our experience and knowledge to help agencies and individuals become aware of their responsibilities to the public, to act reasonably as well as lawfully. We do this by assisting them to identify problems in their systems and operations, solve those problems and improve the way they function.

Our vision

We want to see fair, accountable and responsive administrative practice and service delivery in NSW.

Our mission

In our own organisation and those we oversight, we work to promote:

• good conduct
• fair decision-making
• protection of rights
• provision of quality services.

Our purpose

We aim to:

• help organisations meet their obligations and responsibilities and promote and assist the improvement of their service delivery
• deal effectively and fairly with complaints and work with organisations to improve their complaint-handling systems
• be a leading watchdog agency
• be an effective organisation.

Our values

We will act in accordance with the following values:

• Integrity – acting lawfully, honestly, ethically, with good judgement and high professional standards
• Impartiality – acting in a non-political manner, as an advocate for the public interest independent of government
• Fair play – focussing on fair and reasonable procedures, consistency and proportionality
• Adding value – bringing clarity to problems and identifying practical solutions and improvements that benefit the community
• Respect – treating complainants, people within our jurisdiction and colleagues with dignity and respect.

Our guarantee of service

We will:

• consider each matter promptly, fairly and provide clear reasons for our decisions
• where we are unable to deal with a matter ourselves, explain why, and identify any other appropriate organisations where we can
• help those people who need assistance to make a complaint to the Ombudsman
• add value through our work.