19-05-2025
Removing Ombudsman's archive discredits gov't watchdog, deals blow to Hong Kong public accountability
On May 16, Ming Pao newspaper reported that the Ombudsman, the Hong Kong government watchdog, had removed years of investigation reports, annual reports, mediation examples, and press releases from its website.
In total, officials took down at least 230 investigation reports going back to 2013, which were still available as of mid-April, according to Ming Pao.
Currently, only investigation reports from 2023-24 onwards remain accessible online.
The cutoff date is arbitrary and unjustified. Removing the archive is a major blow to Hong Kong's system of public accountability and discredits the office of the Ombudsman.
Officials established the Ombudsman in 1989, then called the Commissioner for Administrative Complaints, mostly to examine public complaints of maladministration against public organisations, including government departments. In 2001, authorities made the Ombudsman relatively independent of government.
Removing the archive of Ombudsman reports impacts many stakeholders. First, the reports serve the government in its quest for efficient and effective policy delivery. For example, officials selected into new positions (e.g., administrative and executive officers) can quickly identify from the archive those long-standing issues of public concern and how officials have tried to manage them previously.
Second, the archive serves the Legislative Council (LegCo) in its quest to hold the government to account. Third, journalists use Ombudsman-generated data to investigate issues that matter to the public.
Fourth, academics use the archive to understand the behaviour of public officials and politicians: how they set agendas, address public problems, avoid blame, and so forth. Academics also use the archive to produce realistic teaching cases because the reports are thorough, reliable, relevant, and contain practical recommendations for improvement.
Finally, the public, which expects transparent and accountable government, relies on the reports to understand the extent to which and how authorities handle their complaints.
The reports affect the government's reputation. On the one hand, we see cases of shirking, exploiting loopholes, mismanaging unanticipated consequences, and the persistence of wicked problems.
On the other hand, as the government accepts the recommendations, we see officials' efforts to improve public services and the authorities living up to their commitment to be open and transparent.
Given so many stakeholders, we need easy and direct access to the complete corpus of Ombudsman reports, which should be accessible and provided on the Ombudsman's website. On this site, the reports have been easily searchable, which serves the public interest.
I have used the archive to draft public administration teaching cases. The cases mainly focus on problems of cross-departmental policy coordination, lack of enforcement, and legislative loopholes.
The issues involved may seem trivial: drying laundry in public places, obstructing roadside waste skips, haphazardly dumping construction, mismanaging market stalls, and ignoring illegal, potentially dangerous structures on village houses.
However, the reports point out how departments have passed the buck, not taken responsibility, and how officials and citizens both exploit legislative loopholes. The issues not only annoy residents but also cause frustration, dissatisfaction, and disputes both among citizens and between citizens and government departments.
From these reports, we can judge the extent to which government departments learn, improve, and become sensitive to problems previously ignored. Insofar as they do, these are good stories for Hong Kong.
With only reports from 2023-24 onwards available, neither the public nor LegCo may be aware that some recent problems have long histories.
Take tree management in Hong Kong. In a still available report, the Ombudsman reported that from 2018 to 2022, the government received 24,000 complaints about trees.
This is an astonishing number. Of these complaints, 3 to 5 per cent involved disputes among government departments over which agency was responsible.
No longer available are two reports completed in 2016 and another in 2019 on the same issue. These reports indicate that mismanaging trees has been a continuing public irritation.
Remember, falling trees have killed pedestrians in Hong Kong. Yet to understand what is going on now, this background is essential. Surely LegCo members, journalists, and the public need easy and direct access to the older reports.
As is now well known, officials in Hong Kong do not bind themselves by law to establishing and maintaining archives. Thus, whether to maintain archives at all is entirely discretionary. No other place in the world operates this way.
Public accountability and efficient, effective administration require the clarity, certainty, continuity, and stability of archives managed by law.
As late as 2018, the government declared that 'as far as possible' it sought to be publicly accountable, open and transparent.
So, here is an easy win for the authorities. Restore easy access to the archive of Ombudsman's reports and eliminate yet another source of dissatisfaction. And then, draft and implement an archives law to bring this part of public governance in Hong Kong into the 21st century.
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