“The Ombudsman as an institution of administrative reform”.

From the 14th till the 16th of September 2006 the Greek Ombudsman, in collaboration with his counterparts from Catalonia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, organized a capacity building seminar for Southeast European Ombudsman institutions; the theme was “The Ombudsman as an institution of administrative reform”. The topics of the seminar touched upon two different perspectives of the general theme. On the one hand, the exploration of best practices at the level of individual case-handling related to access to public documents and personal data as well as the Ombudsman’s mediation in cases of delays in administrative procedure and in particular, pensions and expropriations. On the other hand, besides sharing and comparing experiences of case-handling among the participants, the fundamental aim of the seminar was to go a step beyond the individual case-handing, by acknowledging the Ombudman’s role in dealing with systemic behavioral patterns of maladministration. As such, the Ombudsman institution is in an advantageous position, able to promote global strategies of administrative reform in administrative procedures and generally in the relations between individuals and the state.
In addition to the organizers, the seminar was attended by delegations from the Office of the European Ombudsman and the respective institutions from Austria, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Serbia and Slovenia, as well as representatives from the office of the European Committee and the OSCE Spillover Monitor Mission to Skopje and Belgrade.