Federal Complaint-Handling, Ombudsman, and Advocacy Offices

Wendy R. Ginsberg
Analyst in Government Organization and Management

Frederick M. Kaiser
Specialist in American National Government

Federal complaint-handling, ombudsman, and advocacy offices have different forms, capacities, and designations. This report, which reviews the state of research in this field and the heritage of such offices, examines and compares them, along with recent legislative developments and past proposals to establish a government-wide ombudsman. In so doing, the report identifies the basic characteristics of these offices, recognizing differences among them with regard to their powers, duties, jurisdictions, locations, and resources, as well as control over them. This study covers only ombudsman-like offices at the federal level that deal with the public, sometimes known as "external ombudsmen." It does not cover "internal ombudsmen," that is, offices created to handle complaints from employees and resolve disputes between them and management; ombudsmanlike offices in the private sector; or similar entities at other levels of government in the United States or abroad, except to note differences among them. 

Legislative interest, albeit sporadic, in establishing a government-wide ombudsman or standardizing individual offices across-the-board dates to the early 1960s. These efforts extended in the 1970s to proposals to establish an independent office of consumer representation or consumer affairs, a plan that President Jimmy Carter later endorsed. Another initiative emerged in 1993, when President William Clinton—through an executive order "Setting Customer Service Standards"—directed executive departments and agencies to make information, service, and complaint-systems easily accessible and provide means to address such complaints. The order also called for agencies to set customer service standards, survey customers, report to the President on those surveys, and publish customer service plans. A subsequent government-wide customer satisfaction survey, incidentally, found a similar range of satisfaction between the private and public sectors. 

Notwithstanding these efforts over the past five decades, no comprehensive, across-the-board transformations have occurred. Nonetheless, numerous individual offices have been established, modified, and proposed by administrative directives, public laws, and congressional bills. This piecemeal approach—reflecting different demands in both the government and society over time and across policy areas—has resulted in a variety of ombudsman-like offices. Although a complete, authoritative identification and description of current offices does not exist, a number of studies—from past and contemporary eras, along with the examples here—provide a wide sampling of complaint-handling and advocacy offices for examination and consideration as models. 

This report consists of three parts: (1) an analysis of the ombudsman concept and a brief look at which countries around the world have used ombudsmen; (2) a breakdown of the various ways in which federal complaint-handling offices differ; and (3) an identification and description of selected ombudsman-like offices, including specifics on their origins and operations.


Date of Report: March 18, 2010
Number of Pages: 51
Order Number: RL34606
Price: $29.95

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