Section 3: Engaging with the public sector and the community

Actively improving public administration.

Our Office is committed to improving administration in public sector agencies to ensure their decisions and actions are fair and transparent.

While we investigate complaints from the community and make recommendations to address their concerns, we also work with State Government agencies and councils to improve their administrative practices.

Our main initiatives for achieving this are our Good Decisions and Complaints Management Training programs, Complaints Management Program and Perspective newsletters.

        Leading effective complaints management
        Measuring compliance with the Directive
        Training for better complaints handling
        The future of complaints management
        Promoting good decision-making
        Training enhancement and feedback
        Our Perspective on government
        Managing unreasonable complainant conduct
        Strengthening accountability through the Whistling While They Work Project
        Measuring the impact of referring complainants to agencies

Leading effective complaints management

As part of our administrative improvement role, our Office has been conducting the Complaints Management Program (CMP) as a long term initiative to improve the complaints management structures and processes of Queensland’s public agencies.

The Public Service Commissioner’s Directive 13/06 – Complaints Management Systems was issued by the Public Service Commissioner on 11 November 2006 following a recommendation made by the Ombudsman to achieve an appropriate standard in complaints handling across agencies that come under the Public Service Act 1996.

The Directive required agencies to implement a visible, accessible and responsive complaints management system (CMS) to better handle complaints from the public by 11 November 2007.

In the lead-up to and after the November deadline, we provided practical assistance to State agencies to develop and implement systems that complied with the Directive.

Activities included:

A series of complaints management workshops conducted between 21 August 2007 and 20 September 2007 that covered the following topics:
- Week 1 Key concepts in complaints management
- Week 2 Building your complaints policy
- Week 3 Building your complaints procedures
- Week 4 Getting your complaints system off the ground
- Week 5 Capturing, understanding and managing your complaints outcomes
Seventeen agencies attended some or all of the workshops. Feedback from the workshops was so positive that we published the workshop material on our website. This material is one of the most frequently downloaded items on our website
Agency Advisory Meetings held to provide agencies with advice on the adequacy of their own complaints policies, and
a Complaints Management Forum held on 3 March 2008 to:
- inform agencies of the next phase of our Complaints Management Program
- identify key issues relevant to effective complaints management in the public sector
- provide a networking and liaison opportunity among fellow policy officers and complaints managers.

Officers from 19 State agencies and two universities attended the forum.

Measuring compliance with the Directive

In April 2008, we commenced an audit of State agencies’ compliance with the Public Service Commissioner’s Directive, which is part of our Complaints Management Program Phase Three.

We developed a self-audit questionnaire based on the Directive and prepared instructions for completing the survey.

Agencies were asked to fill out the questionnaire and send their responses to us by 30 June 2008.

Early in the new financial year, we will assess the responses and provide further assistance where necessary.

Later in the financial year, we intend to report to Parliament outlining:

the extent to which agencies have complied with the Directive
whether agencies are achieving a level of best practice above that required by the Directive
where appropriate, recommendations to specific agencies about ways they can improve their complaint systems.

Training for better complaints handling

Participating State agencies and councils for Complaints
Management Training 2007-08 (JPEG format 250k)

We began delivering our Complaints Management Training module for internal review officers in October 2007 and introduced a module for customer service and other frontline officers in November 2007.

We offer the training to agencies that have their complaints policies and procedures in place, either in accordance with Directive 13/06 or, in the case of councils, the Local Government Act 1993.

Complaints management is a vital component of every decision-making framework and is especially important for agencies that have daily interaction with the community for the purposes of providing services and benefits.

Both training modules complement our Good Decisions Training program by providing officers with an understanding of the principles of effective complaints management.

The training is designed to assist participants to:

identify specific complaint types
manage difficult customer behaviour
understand their authority
use effective interview techniques
record and report outcomes properly.

Every training session is a unique blend of best practice theory and scenarios based on real cases and the agencies’ policies and procedures. This allows us to tailor our training to ensure it is relevant to every officer.

We conducted a total of 34 complaints management sessions this year, comprising 19 sessions for frontline officers and 15 sessions for internal review officers. Thirteen State Government departments and nine councils received the training throughout Queensland and approximately 520 public sector officers participated.

We constantly work to improve our training program to ensure it is ‘best practice’ and relevant to the work of public sector officers. During the year we:

drafted a comprehensive training workbook to provide participants with a useful reference tool when managing complaints
continued to develop new case studies to ensure their relevance to each participating agency.

The feedback received from participants has also been very encouraging with:

96% agreeing that the information presented will help them manage complaints more effectively in their daily work
95% indicating that they would recommend the training to other officers in the public sector.

Some agencies have made a substantial commitment to our training. For example, the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations has encouraged its regional managers to have their officers trained. To date, 230 of its officers throughout Queensland have participated in the training.

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