BackIn 2018, the Parliamentary Ombudsman received 5,591 complaints. The number is very high, although it falls slightly from the all-time record of 6,192 in 2017. The administrative branches with the highest number of complaints in 2018 were social services (1,097), the police (632) and healthcare (612).
The Ombudsman resolved 5,408 complaints during last year. There were 1,009 resolved complaints related to social services, 622 related to the police and 580 related to healthcare.
Record number of requests for statements and hearings
The Ombudsman received a record number of 144 requests for statements and hearings regarding the legislative process. 115 of these resulted in statements to various ministries or in hearings in parliamentary committees.
The maximum processing time remains the same
At the end of the year, none of the pending complaints dated back more than a year. This target was reached for the sixth year running.
A large number of measures taken
A total of 805 complaints resulted in actions taken by the Ombudsman. This is approximately 15% of the total number of resolved complaints.
Own-initiative activities
Despite the large number of complaints, the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman was also able to focus on its own-initiative activities. A total of 122 inspections were conducted last year. Efforts were made to allocate resources to the Ombudsman’s inspections because the Ombudsman serves as the National Preventive Mechanism under the UN Convention against Torture.
The number of resolved own-initiative cases was 82 in 2018. The Ombudsman took the initiative in 80 investigations.
Source: Parliamentary Ombudsman of Finland
