People wearing face masks in Auckland CBD on a hot summer day under the red traffic light setting. Photo / Alex Burton
People wearing face masks in Auckland CBD on a hot summer day under the red traffic light setting. Photo / Alex Burton
The Ombudsman's office is no longer a shambles but it struggles with some civil servants who have a 1950s attitude to transparency, MPs were told today.
Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier and Speaker Trevor Mallard addressed a Parliamentary select committee.
Boshier said Covid-related complaints drove much of the office's work over the past 12 months.
And a big spike in complaints emerged when the pandemic response's red light setting was activated early this year, he said.
He said different local councils had divergent approaches to handling OIA requests and complaints. Some were efficient but some were still tardy, he said.
Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier said state sector officials must take transparency issues seriously. Photo / Paul Taylor
Boshier said the pandemic had unsettled many people - and some members of the public were more agitated than he'd previously experienced.
"Some of the people are more uneven in temperament ... For a number of our people, they are highly stressed," he said.
"They are fed up with the state. They don't trust the state."
And he said the civil service often had a lot of work to do to win the trust of Māori.
"It's our job to make sure that people do trust the state, and that happens through transparency."
Mallard said before Boshier's appointment in 2015, the office was chaotic and some Official Information Act requests took years to process.
He said one 2013 request for official information was not returned until 2017.
"There were lots and lots of long-term overdue OIAs that took some time to sort out."
The Speaker is the minister responsible for the Ombudsman's office.
He said where the system needed fixing, a combination of changes in attitude and logistical issues were probably involved.
He said sometimes public agency leaders or managers had ideas more in line with days of the 1951 Official Secrets Act than the OIA.
Mallard has been in Parliament since 1984 and said regardless of which party was in power, good ministers had some traits in common, as did the inept ones.
