2023 Ombudsman Report finds complaints are down but eGov proves challenging for both young and old

Last year's Ombudsman's Report found a significant drop of 23% in the number of complaints made in respect of Government Departments, but concludes this brings levels back to more realistic pre-pandemic levels.

However, one surprising find in Ron Coram's final report is that young adults are finding eGov very challenging while elderly citizens refused to use the online platform describing it as 'non user friendly.'

Young people seem to have an in-built ability to easily navigate IT systems but not for eGov according to the latest Ombudsman's Report.

Given the move towards online platforms to access Government services, the Ombudsman decided to conduct surveys on specific age groups to test how citizens found the digital facilities.

Surprisingly, the results showed that younger adults were experiencing major challenges with eGov, while many elderly residents refused to use it altogether. The feedback received was that senior citizens felt marginalised, expressed no confidence in the system, did not understand how to navigate the digital platform, and found eGov guidelines to be 'non user friendly'.

The report notes, however, that public counters were all re-opened last year.

In 2023, 203 complaints were received in respect of Government Departments, agencies and other public bodies representing a 23% decline. Although significant, the report concludes levels have now generally fallen to some normality following the impact to public services as a result of the pandemic.

As is recent years, the Housing Authority attracted the highest number of complaints but with a substantial reduction of 53% on the previous year. Other departments also followed this downward trend with the exception of the Department of Education which received 11 complaints compared to 8 in 2022, and Gibraltar Car Parks which received 10 compared to 2 the year before.

As highlighted in the 2022 Report, the majority of complaints were down to delays, lack of communication and in-action by Government Departments. For the first time in years, Ron Coram said a meeting was held with the Chief Secretary in January precisely to discuss this, and consider plans towards introducing quarterly meetings. He said Glendon Martinez revealed plans to introduce a specific hub at No. 6 Convent Place that would generally handle complaints forwarded by the Office of the Ombudsman and, therefore, operate hand-in-glove.

Ron Coram praised Civil Servants for their hard work and thanked his team at the Ombudsmans Office for all their support over the past three years.

Wendy Cumming took up the role on the 1st May.