News

The Office of the Ombudsman continues to receive an increased number of inquiries and formal complaints/appeals in nearly all areas overseen by the office, as detailed in the 2021 Annual Report made public in Parliament today, 7 December 2022.

Established in September 2017, the Ombudsman’s office entered its fourth full year of operations last year as Cayman’s one-stop-shop for complaints against inefficient or poor government administration, complaints against the conduct of police officers, whistleblower complaints against both public and private sector entities, data protection complaints and reports of data breaches, as well as Freedom of Information (FOI) appeals. 

The past year has been one of transition for our office, as the end of 2021 and early 2022 saw the departure of a number of experienced and professional staff members, including former Ombudsman Sandy Hermiston in early 2022. More recently, we saw the hiring of our first Caymanian Ombudsman, local attorney Sharon Roulstone, who took over the post in April 2022.

“Despite the current short staffing situation, our office has many victories to celebrate,” Ms. Roulstone said. “We’ve adopted a modern approach to customer complaints with the creation of an informal resolution process, a flexible way of resolving complaints without the need for time-consuming formal investigations. We have resolved a backlog of more than 140 historical complaints against police conduct. We have established an efficient process for the handling of data protection complaints and reports of data breaches and we continue to successfully resolve FOI appeals.”

Ms. Roulstone noted that there is much more work to do, particularly in reforming legislation around whistleblower protection and police complaints. Some sections of the maladministration complaints and the data protection legislation will need review in the coming year as well.

“Our office has been around long enough for us to have a good understanding of what’s working and what isn’t,” Ms. Roulstone said. “We have already taken plans for reform of certain areas to lawmakers, and we will hopefully be adding to those in the near future.”

An overview of each section of the Office of the Ombudsman for the calendar year 2021 is provided below.