19

82

Appendix 2

Anna McMartin/MOH
Patrick Davis/MOH@MOH, Claudia Ibbotson/MOH@MOH, David Pickering/MOH@MOH,
21/06/2019 03:53 p.m.
Notes from meeting with Ombudsman's office

IO

N

AC

T

From:
To:
Date:
Subject:



R

E

TH

U

EA

SE
D



N

D




ER




O

FF



IN
FO



L



Be aware of potential tensions between monitoring and advocacy functions within the same
organisation
Organisations like the HDC and Human Rights Commission set themselves up internally to keep
these functions separate
Useful for the Commission to look right across the landscape and 'bring the threads together' - no
one's doing this
Cross-over between mental health and disability - it can end up being luck which 'path' someone
goes down when they make a complaint
The Office is happy to work with us on information gathering - eg, their legislation contains something
about an ability to consult with the IPCA, and vice versa, which enables information to be shared.
Aimee Bryant (principal advisor) will follow up with information.
They're also interested in how the OIA will apply to the Commission - I said we assumed it would
Some information collected by the Commission might be 'protected', so wouldn't have to be released
under the OIA - eg, whistleblowers. I gave the example of fast food workers complaining about
bullying - this would be protected too.
We need to talk further with them about how the OIA covers the MAC - this is trickier
If there are multiple Commissioners, think about how we set the chair up to succeed - in terms of
being able to set the direction, and able to carry out the management (too many people with diffuse
responsibility gets messy)
It will be important for the Commission to have some sort of framework for judging performance and
setting benchmarks. This is something the Office did in relation to its responsibilities for the
International Monitoring Mechanism (in relation to the disability convention?). Data availability has
been a big problem for them, and it's taken eight years of working with agencies to start solving this something the Commission will likely have to do as well.

IC
IA



M

AT

Hi guys. Robyn and I went to talk to the Ombudsman's office just now. They were really helpful, and
offered to lend us a hand on aspects of the information gathering work. My notes below. Anna

R
EL

Dr Anna McMartin (on secondment - Principal Analyst, Mental Health & Addiction Directorate)
Manager
Community Wellbeing
Population Outcomes
Strategy and Policy
Ministry of Health
Ext: 2860

s
9(2)
(a)
mailto:Anna_McMartin@moh.govt.nz