Ombudsman's overview

This year’s TIO Annual Report is evidence of a year of extraordinary activity for the scheme. On every level, and under every one of our strategic goals, the organisation has been focused on achieving outcomes, making changes and above all addressing demand.

The growth rate in the first half of the year continued the trend of the previous 12 months and stretched the organisation across all its operations. In order to keep up with demand and cope with the pressures of change, we needed to be flexible in our approach, and to explore a range of ways of delivering against our ‘Resolution’ goal.

Core Business

In this respect, the work of the Core Business division, led by Deputy Ombudsman Simon Cleary, was nothing short of extraordinary. The backlog of cases awaiting escalation to level 2 (see Complaint classification), which had increased steadily over a period of around eight months as a consequence of ever-increasing demand, caused us great concern, as this meant we were not delivering the speedy service which in the past had been our hallmark. With the encouragement of Council and the support of the Board to ensure adequate funding, we ramped up recruitment and training activities; engaged closely with individual scheme members to explore different methods of timely resolution; and ultimately were able to address this significant backlog and meet our service levels.

Connect.resolve campaign

‘Resolution’ was also a key driver of the connect.resolve campaign, which is featured separately. This campaign allowed the TIO to approach a systemic industry issue – poor customer service – in an innovative and targeted way.

Our ‘Remarkable’ goal resulted in a number of significant initiatives to improve our business processes and overall accountability to our governing bodies. We expanded the executive team by creating a new position of Financial Controller, filled by Julie Zammit, who has brought to the TIO significant experience in the business world and a passion for performance measuring and reporting that will help raise the standards of our outputs in these key areas.

On every level, and under every one of our strategic goals, the organisation has been focused on achieving outcomes, making changes and above all addressing demand.

The Business Support Division, led by General Manager Business Phil Carruthers, has also produced significant results against the ‘Remarkable’ goal in the reporting year. Our information technology area has enabled us to continue to provide services to ever more consumers and across two sites, as we expanded to house our additional staff. The human resources activities around selecting, inducting and supporting the many new staff and their new managers have been considerable, as has the conducting of the staff survey and the program for implementing its recommendations. In terms of supporting our governing bodies, this division has achieved outstanding results in improving the quality of our documentation and our reporting to these bodies.

Engaging with ISPs

Under our goal to ‘Reach Out’, the Planning and Stakeholder Engagement Division, led by David Brockman, has undertaken a range of activities to improve how we communicate with all our stakeholders. Our Member Communications area has maintained a focus on actively engaging with members to assist them improve complaint handling, and conducted an important survey of ISP members of the TIO scheme. The Policy team has focused on auditing our work; ensuring that industry codes are well communicated and used as yardsticks of good industry practice; and providing valuable feedback to regulators. Through Public Affairs and our new Communications Manager we have worked to improve our accessibility, especially to vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, and to upgrade the full range of our communication activities.

Enhancing our data

Finally, under our ‘Relevant’ goal, we have continued to provide ever more targeted data to regulators, policy makers, other key stakeholders and members as part of our strategy to enhance our reputation as an authority on complaints. We have also worked actively to keep connected to key consumer and industry groups. Under that heading, we welcome the establishment of ACCAN, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, which was developed during the year while coming into existence formally on 1 July 2009.

As this is my last report as Ombudsman, I would like to record my sincere thanks to the staff and management of the TIO. It has been a wonderful privilege to work with people of such dedication and commitment to the values of the TIO scheme.

I wish the new Ombudsman every success in the years ahead.

Deirdre O’Donnell
Ombudsman

Profiles

Ombudsman Deirdre O'Donnell

Deputy Ombudsman Simon Cleary

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