The first public meeting of the Ombudsman Committee was held in Parliament and broadcast online on Wednesday, with Ombudsman Sharon Roulstone updating MPs and the general public on the work of the office in general and her progress since taking up the role in 2022.
Roulstone, the first Caymanian to become Ombudsman, described her role as assisting the public in bringing complaints, which are heard in an “impartial, transparent and accountable way”, against the government, police and private bodies, and said she welcomed the opportunity to show the public how the office carried out its work.
“We don’t take sides. We hear evidence from both sides, and then we make a ruling,” she said.
“There is no one who is above the law.”
Describing the Ombudsman’s office as an “alternative system of justice” for the people of the Cayman Islands, Roulstone said that over the past few years, her office has dealt with complaints against the police and government as well as appeals under the Freedom of Information Act, Whistleblower Protection Act and Data Protection Act, and that her office had had its busiest year since it was opened in 2017.
Record number of complaints
According to the Ombudsman Annual Report 2023, the number of cases received and resolved increased across all sectors. The number of data protection breach reports nearly doubled from 90 to 178 in 2023, while the number resolved went from 65 to 152, a record number.
There was also a record number of complaints against both government and the police. One hundred complaints against government were resolved in 2023, more than double the previous year, and 40 complaints resolved against the police.
There was a small increase in the number of Freedom of Information Act appeals and resolved cases. Complaints under the Whistleblower Protection Act, while still relatively few in number, also grew.
The meeting was chaired by Bernie Bush and attended by Chris Saunders and Jay Ebanks, with apologies for absence from the other two committee MPs, Joey Hew and David Wight.
MPs raised a series of issues with Roulstone and members of her team, including how securely government and the police held information about members of the public, and the outcome of various cases outlined in the annual report.
CBC risk of data breaches
One case which was updated by the Ombudsman involved Cayman Islands Customs and Border Control. Saunders asked whether there had been any updates to a confidential whistleblower complaint, which had revealed that CBC could not monitor if or when its officers and other public officials accessed its computerised records management system, which contained commercially sensitive information about private businesses and personal information.
The Ombudsman had investigated the complaint and found that CBC was not able to monitor who logged on and why, in spite of having the software to develop an audit function, which put it at risk of violating the Data Protection Act.
Updating MPs, Roulstone said, “When we made the recommendation that they had to be able to trace whoever was logged onto the system and for what purpose, they worked tirelessly to make sure that they had the budget and it was implemented along with all of the other recommendations, so that’s a success story.”
Civil servants’ rights violated
Roulstone, however, raised concerns that government civil servants do not have recourse through the Ombudsman’s office.
“Because of legislation under the Complaints (Maladministration) Law, we are precluded from investigating personnel-related matters,” she said.
She pointed out that the Civil Service Appeals Commission only allows people to appeal a decision which has been made, but that would not apply in situations such as bullying in which a decision hasn’t been made, “which ties our hands. So we have a large demographic that are without recourse and that is a violation of a human right and it’s a very big concern I have.”
Since taking up the role, Roulstone, who described herself as “Caymanian born and bred”, said she was passionate about staff training and improving the culture of the office.
“It’s going to be one and a half years when I reach retirement age, so I took my post knowing that I was never going to be there forever,” she said.
“I always wanted to ensure that a Caymanian succeeded me, so I’ve been passionate about our staff getting the professional development that they need, so that any one of them can rise to the challenge to ultimately be my successor.”
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