Ombudsman office could merge commissioners

Jan Liebaers, Acting Information Commissioner

(CNS): The government is pressing ahead with the idea of merging the work of the complaints and the information commissioners’ offices into a single ombudsman’s office, which would also incorporate the proposed independent police complaints office and data protection services. However, it is not clear if this means the current commissioners’ jobs will all be merged into just one complaints and information boss or whether the merger would be confined to shared office functions. 

At a press conference on Monday (see related story), held to update the public on the progress of the civil service reform, known as ‘Project Future’, and some of the recommendations in an EY report about the revitalization of the civil service, Premier Alden McLaughlin said Cabinet had agreed that this proposed merger should move to the next stage and a business case was currently being drawn up for the change.

The proposal came in for criticism from the former complaints commissioner, Nicola Williams, who left Cayman at the beginning of this year. She said a super ombudsman would undermine the strength of the commissioners and could fall foul of the constitution. Williams said that any such merger would be “a retrograde step that will not strengthen the OCC” but would weaken and diminish the offices.  “Splicing together disparate bodies with completely different functions whose only common thread is oversight is not, in my opinion, good governance. This is a view that I know is shared by the Acting Information Commissioner.”

She pointed out that housing the sharing offices with the independent oversight offices in the public sector was a good idea but very different from a merger.

McLaughlin said that not everyone agreed with Williams. He did not say whether the commissioners would be scrapped but said it would be up to the civil servants in the unit created to examine the reform of the public sector.

This was one of six proposals that government hopes will increase efficiency and cut costs in the civil service. McLaughlin also revealed that government plans to create a utilities regulator, merging government bodies such as the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA), the Information and Communications Technology Authority (ICTA) and the Petroleum Inspectorate into a single public utilities commission.

The premier said that the goal of the mergers was to try and address the replication of functions that had arisen over the years as new government departments were created. He pointed out that as polices were developed and legislation passed to deal with bespoke areas or services in government, new offices spring up. In regulatory areas where there was similar jobs government could cut out the duplication, he said.