Terms of use & user guide

This website is operated by the Commission on Administrative Justice (Office of the Ombudsman). By using it — browsing, filing a complaint, making an Access to Information request, registering for a training or tracking a complaint — you accept these terms. Every service on this site is free of charge, except where a fee is stated on the page itself.

We investigate maladministration in the public sector — delay, abuse of power, unfair treatment, manifest injustice, discourtesy — and we oversee the Access to Information Act, 2016. We can mediate, recommend remedies, and report on public bodies that do not comply. We are not a court: we cannot overturn a court decision, award damages, or act on a matter that is before a court or another tribunal.

Some matters belong to another body — a constitutional commission, a ministry, or a county government. If yours does, we will tell you and point you to the right door rather than leave your complaint sitting with us. The directory on this site lists those bodies and their official contacts.

You may file without giving your identity at all. When you do, we hold nothing that identifies you, we cannot trace you, and no declaration is asked of you — there is nothing to declare against. You receive an anonymous code on submission: keep it, because it is the only way back to your submission and to the inbox where we reply. We cannot reissue a lost code. An anonymous complaint joins the allocation queue and is screened by the assigned officer like any other, but some matters — a personal grievance about a promotion, a transfer or harassment — usually cannot be carried to a conclusion without naming you. If yours is one of those, we will say so and ask whether you are willing to be named before going further. You are free to say no.

You may instead give your identity and ask that it not be disclosed. We then treat your identity as confidential: it is masked by default in our views and in anything we send to the body complained against. Where an officer must reveal it to carry the matter forward, that reveal is a deliberate, prompted action and is permanently recorded — who revealed what, when, and from where.

If you file under your own name, you are asked to declare that what you have told us is true to the best of your knowledge. Knowingly giving false information to the Commission, or fabricating a document in support of a complaint, is an offence under the Commission on Administrative Justice Act, 2011, and we may decline or close a matter on that basis.

Every filing is a complaint from the moment it is received. It joins the allocation queue, is assigned to an officer who screens it, and on acceptance it is registered with a Commission reference number, which we send to you by SMS or email. Use it to track the matter and to quote in any follow-up. Keep your phone number current with us — it is where notifications go, even if the number belongs to a relative.

Send only documents you are entitled to share, and only what is relevant to your matter. Do not upload material that is malicious, or that infringes another person's rights. We store what you send under the Commission's records-retention schedule, as described in the privacy policy.

Do not use this website to attempt unauthorised access, to disrupt the service for others, to harvest personal data, or to submit automated or repetitive filings. We may restrict access where we see this, and we log activity for security purposes.

We keep the guidance, statutory timelines and contact details on this site as current as we can, but they are general information and not legal advice. Where this site and the law differ, the law prevails. The site may be unavailable during maintenance; if it is, our offices and the toll-free line remain open.

We may revise these terms as the Commission's processes and the law change. The date below shows when they were last revised. Continuing to use the site after a revision means you accept the revised terms.