International Ombudsman Association Annual Conference, St. Louis

The IOA's Annual Conference ended earlier today. It is the largest gathering of Ombudsmen from across the globe. This year there were several hundred particpants from North and Latin America, Europe and Asia. I had the pleasure of presenting a paper on Ombudsman evaluation with Mr. John Zinsser, who has done the third party reviews of the evaluations conducted by this Office. We each spoke about our roles in the evaluation process and gave information about tools which other Ombudsmen may use to develop assessment information. I am pleased that the talk was received as one of the most informative at the conference. We had an audience of about 90 Ombudsmen, and I enjoyed the lively questions and discussions.