Re: [alac] The Ombudsman and the world

["John R Levine" <johnl@xxxxxxxx>]

> Or, since most of the complaints were about matters outside the
> Ombudsman's scope, it shows that Americans are worse at following
> instructions than those of other nationalities.

Honestly, I don't know what the ombudsman's scope is.  There's a whole
page in his report describing a case where the complainant thought he was
Immigration Canada (didn't he work there before?) so he told them the
right people to contact.

I wonder if there would be some way to confidentially poll people who've
gone to the ombudsman and find out how satisfied they were with his
results.  I get the impression that Frank does what he can but he's in a
an institutional box that makes it unlikely that he'll have much effect.
In his report he only mentions one success, about an unreasonable delay,
which I would guess is an issue that the ALAC was already addressing
before he heard about it.

Look at Ed Hasbrouck's case, for example, in which Ed asked for help
getting the board to do the review specified in the bylaws.  (This is
public, Ed's blogged about this.)  The ombudsman wasn't able to help, and
the only thing that worked was to make a pest of himself at the board's
public forum.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@xxxxxxxx, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor
"I shook hands with Senators Dole and Inouye," said Tom, disarmingly.