References: The Public Complaints Standing Committee (PCSC) was established via Gazette Notice No. 5826 of June 29, 2007 and No. 6327 of July 13, 2007. The PCSC is mandated to "receive, register, sort, classify and document all complaints against public officers in Ministries, Parastatals/State Corporations, Statutory Bodies or any other public institution. In addition, the PCSC is mandated to inquire into allegations of misuse of office, corruption, and unethical conduct, breach of integrity, maladministration, delay, injustice, discourtesy, inattention, incompetence, misbehavior, inefficiency or ineptitude."

Prior to PCSC's establishment, the Kenya National Commission of Human Rights had acted quite effectively as an ad hoc ombudsman.

Peer Review Comments: The office of the ombudsman was established by the executive arm of the government. It was not a creature of the law.

References: Gazette Notice No. 5826 of June 29, 2007 that established the Public Complaints Standing Committee provides at Section 3 that it shall be responsible to the president to whom it shall provide quarterly reports. This is the height of executive interference.

References: To the extent that it is appointed by, and reports to the president, it is unlikely that the Public Complaints Standing Committee (PCSC) operates independently. In any case, since its operationalization in August 2008, there is yet no evidence of the fruits of its labor in spite of common knowledge of the rot in the Kenyan public service. See [ LINK ].

Peer Review Comments: The PCSC seeks to be delinked from central government and placed under Parliament - currently it operates under close scrutiny of the Office of the President and the Ministry of Justice.

[ LINK ]

References: The chair and members of the Public Complaints Standing Committee (PCSC) are appointed by the president under Section 23 (1) of the Constitution to three-year terms. The gazette notice does not specify whether or how they can be removed or whether their tenures are renewable. However, the Constitution provides that all public servants hold office at the pleasure of the president.

Meanwhile, the complaints commission reports it is at an advanced stage in drafting a bill to be tabled in Parliament seeking to give the body a status in law. This is likely to be accompanied by more secure and objective terms of employment for the commissioners.

Also see [ LINK ].

Peer Review Comments: The head of the ombudsman's office has no protection at all.

References: Four of the five commissioners of the Public Complaints Standing Committee (PCSC) are qualified lawyers, meaning the agency is headed by people who are quite conversant with Kenyan law. The agency also has an executive head and a complement of full-time secretariat staff. The executive director reports that the agency's budget resources have been increasing over the years; but much still remains to be done. For example, one f the reasons why the agency only cleared 22 percent of the 1,720 complaints received since its June 2007 inception is because of capacity constraints. The Chairman reports they are weighing the relative costs/benefits of decentralization to provinces and districts and the alternative of a dedicated ICT expansion scheme.

See PCSC's fourth quarterly report for 2008/2009 covering the period April 1, 2009 to June 30, 2009.

References: The agency's staffing appointments to date have enhanced its capacity to deliver. However, much remains to be done, which is why it has only been able to resolve 22 percent of the 1,720 complaints received in its two years of existence. The agency's legal framework also undermines its capacity to act independently as it has to always rely on the Office of the President and the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs. Once the agency is given its exclusive statutory identity, it will be in a better position to act independently, says the chairman.

See 14/11/2009 report at [ LINK ].

Peer Review Comments: The ombudsman's office is frequently ignored.

References: The Public Complaints Standing Committee (PCSC) or the Office of the Ombudsman Kenya was established under a basket-funding program in the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, dubbed the Governance, Justice Law Order and Service (GJLOS). Consequently, its funding has been quite regular. However, as an enterprise breaking into new ground, and notwithstanding the examples to be gleaned from other country experiences, funding has not kept pace with need. The executive director "express(es) appreciation to government for the increase in its budget..."; yet, much more financial resources are required if the agency is to fulfill its ambitious intention to migrate "all its operations and processes from a manual to an IT platform in the next quarter."

See PCSC's 'The fourth Quarterly Report 2008/09...'.

References: The Public Complaints Standing Committee (PCSC) publishes regular quarterly reports as required by its terms of reference. However, the reports are a mere summation of workloads rather than an in-depth analysis of the contents of complaints, debates arising and the manner in which the cases were resolved. An approach that exposes details of specific cases might be educational for other managers of public institutions who might be faced with similar circumstances.

References: The public Complaints Standing Committee is essentially an investigative body. On receipt of a complaint, it evaluates its relevance to PCSC's mandate. If positive, it interviews the complainant to establish details of the matter. Thereafter, PCSC approaches the relevant government agency with the complaint to establish the agency's response to the allegations received.

References: The Public Complaints Standing Committee (PCSC) was established by a mere Gazette Notice, meaning its authority is minimal. It merely receives complaints, refers these to the relevant government agency and hopes the agency will respond. It has no capacity at all to mete out punishment or penalties. However, this concern is being addressed by the bill that is being drafted to make the agency a statutory one.

Peer Review Comments: The PCSC is seeking special prosecutorial powers in the new constitution as well as through a Bill it is preparing for debate in Parliament. It is also seeking to be autonomous and to have its mandate extended into the private sector.

[ LINK ]

References: The distribution of complaints against government departments varies greatly; so does the efficiency of their reactions to issues raised by the Public Complaints Standing Committee (PCSC). PCSC's 'The Fourth Quarterly Report 2008/2009' does not indicate how many complaints were received against each department. However, it notes that Ministry of Lands and Kenya Police accounted respectively for 20 percent and 15 percent of all the 20 cases for which there was no response for over one year.

References: The Public Complaints Standing Committee (PCSC) tries to act on complaints promptly, only being constrained by its weak capacity. For example, during the April 1 to June 30 quarter, PCSC dealt with 909 complaints. Of the 270 which were new, inquiries were initiated in 43 with the balance being carried forward to the next quarter.

See PCSC's 'The Fourth Quarterly Report 2008/09.'

References: While the Gazette Notice establishing the Public Complaints Standing Committee (PCSC) stated that the agency submits quarterly reports to the president, the agency has actually taken it upon itself to publish the same reports. It is developing its website at [ LINK ], which will contain such reports once operational.

References: To the extent that the Public Complaints Standing Committee only has one office in Nairobi, this encumbers the public's access to its quarterly reports. However, the proposal is to publish these online, meaning they will be quite easily accessible to the public with ICT access, even if those without such access will continue to be inconvenienced.

References: To the extent that the Public Complaints Standing Committee only has one office in Nairobi, this encumbers the public's access to its quarterly reports. However, the proposal is to publish these online, meaning they will be quite easily accessible to the public with ICT access, even if those without such access will continue to be inconvenienced.

Peer Review Comments: Effectively, this means that the financial burden to access the reports of the ombudsman is minimal.