Ombudsman

If there’s something weird and it don’t look good, who we gonna call? Well, if that “something weird” is potentially shady behavior on the part of an organization or government, we just might call an ombudsman.

An ombudsman’s job is to investigate complaints of rights violations and/or maladministration perpetrated by governments or businesses to the detriment of the public. We can find ombudsmen everywhere: state governments, local governments, national governments, corporations, watch groups, schools, media outlets…the list goes on.

But even if an ombudsman is appointed by a particular entity to investigate complaints, they act independently and try to come up with the best solution for the issue, regardless of who’s signing their paycheck. Are their recommendations legally binding? Not always, but even if they’re not, they’re still taken very seriously.

Maybe it’s true that we ain’t afraid of no ghost, but if our institution has been up to no good—whether our no-goodness is intentional or not—we should definitely be concerned if an ombudsman is appointed to investigate us.