The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman is changing the way it works from the beginning of April and will be investigating more complaints and sharing more information with government organisations. This will help to improve public services.

An inaugural meeting of the “Visegrad Group (V4) and Western Balkans Expert Network” on the rule of law and fundamental rights was held in Warsaw on the 12-13th March 2013.

The Office of the Ombudsman of Northern Ireland published its case digest for the month of March 2013. The digest is available for download.

Proceedings of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights in petitions of citizens serving their sentences in places of deprivation of liberty prove massive violations of their rights to pension, particularly with regard to disability pension.

The Ombudsman of the Basque Country (“Ararteko”) and the European Region of the IOI jointly organize a seminar on “The Right to Gender Identity and Affective-Sexual Diversity. Challenges for Equality” to be held in Bilbao on 20 and 21 May 2013.

The Ombudsman started visits of facilities for seniors and revealed that three quarters of regional facilities for seniors write on their websites that they will not admit persons treated for a mental disease.

Further to the launch of its redesigned website in September 2011, the Public Services Ombudsman of Gibraltar is now pleased to announce that it is expanding its service facilities by introducing Skype™ support.

The 34^th Annual Conference of the United States Ombudsman Association (USOA) will be held in Indianapolis from 28 October to 1 November 2013.