The municipality of Amsterdam will improve its approach to integrity violations and social insecurity, but it will not do so on the basis of a recently published report by local ombudsman Munish Ramlal.
That is the core of the formal response from Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema and councilor Hester van Buren (personnel and organization, PvdA) to the report Report with confidence that the ombudsman of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area made public earlier this month. From research by NRC it turned out that the municipality and the ombudsman had been at odds for months about this “investigation on their own initiative” that was opened in April 2024. The dissatisfaction is loudly reflected in the letter that the mayor and the alderman sent to the municipal council on Thursday.
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The city council has “fundamental criticism of the investigation” and finds “the findings and conclusions based on them not reliable and insufficiently representative” to justify the ombudsman’s accusations against the municipal Integrity Office. The letter repeats some previously raised criticisms.
For example, the ombudsman is said to have drawn his conclusions on the basis of individual case studies. “In other words, his research is only about untested experiences.” It is also stated: “The ombudsman indicated orally that only three-quarters of the people interviewed had actually ‘done business’ with the Integrity Bureau. Ombudsman Ramlal previously refuted that claim in NRC.
Recommendations
Of the ombudsman’s three recommendations, the municipality is adopting one – and that is one that the city council had promised to the council years ago: taking an external Integrity Commission seriously. The municipal council told NRC earlier this month that the committee would start work in July next year. The letter states that the committee will “start work” in January. The names of the experts included will be announced before the end of the year.
The core of the other recommendations was: it is better to have reports of socially undesirable behavior tested by an external reporting center to avoid “the appearance of bias”, as the ombudsman writes. The municipal council says that external experts would only lead to longer processing times for reports.
The city council finds “the findings and conclusions based on them not reliable and insufficiently representative”
The mayor and alderman acknowledge that the handling of reports at the Integrity Office is now too slow. As well as the fact that the municipal organization still falls short in maintaining equality as a standard. “Certain assumptions, prejudices, patterns and behavior, which hinder equality and safety, are more deeply ingrained in our organization than we would like and we may have thought until recently.” The city council “is careful not to create false expectations”: structural improvement takes time, write the mayor and alderman.
Big doubts
In a meeting with members of the General Affairs council committee, it turned out that Mayor Halsema had already written to the presidium of the municipal council in October that “we have major doubts about future cooperation with the ombudsman.” In her view, the ombudsman’s improper working method in the investigation into the Integrity Office was part of a pattern in which she also disqualified some previous investigations.
Ombudsman Ramlal maintained radio silence after the publication of his report and the mayor’s lashing out at the council committee. Together with the mayor, he will speak to the General Affairs Council Committee next week about the report and its history.
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