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Operationally Useful Data about the Value and Effectiveness of Organizational Ombuds

An Introduction to a Resource Repository of Working Papers for Comment

©2026 By Mary Rowe and Timothy Hedeen, with Jennifer Schneider and Hector Escalante

This Resource Repository is a work in progress. It is open to improvements, additions, deletions, critique, revision, and commentary. The resources here are not intended as “publications,” but rather as drafts of working papers. Please think of these as a platform for ombuds brainstorming. All drafts here are meant for discussion by organizational ombuds. If any page here is helpful, or you would like to offer additions or revisions, please let us know. Please contact Mary Rowe or other co-authors, if you can help to improve these pages or have another page to offer. And please forgive occasional overlaps in content from one working paper to another.

The purpose of the Repository is to support identifying—and helping to quantify—the value of an Organizational Ombuds (OO), with operationally useful data that meet International Ombuds Association (IOA) Standards of Practice. We need metrics at a time when:

  • keeping confidential data requires foresight and great care,
  • many employers and organizational members have little idea about the work of an OO—and welcome metrics and stories with operationally useful information,
  • some organizations are looking to AI to perform human services, and, therefore, ombuds would like to highlight services where ombuds excel and AI is limited, and
  • many ombuds colleagues have asked us for suggestions about AI and about using AI.

AI was used extensively for several topics in this Resource Repository; pages where AI was used are marked in red. AI itself often notes that “AI responses to queries may be inadequate, incorrect or offensive.”  Whatever is here as an idea from AI might change overnight. Please always verify anything from AI.

See if the papers in the Resource Repository help to identify and quantify operationally useful data and help you to communicate how often you deal with various issues each week. Some of the papers here, like the Friday Checklist, are meant to be templates—or ideas to consider—for organizational ombuds to revise or use in ways that fit each practice.

And…finally, a reminder:

All digitized data that are online—theoretically—can be accessed and recorded in transit. (And of course your database also could be subpoenaed even if offline.) While no method is entirely foolproof, two reasonable approaches to collecting, using, and keeping data without endangering the International Ombuds Association (IOA) Standards of Practice are: 1) Keep it “air-gapped”—i.e., entirely offline—and routinely delete or shred it, or 2) collect and use and keep only those data that both illuminate Ombuds value and effectiveness and are IOA Standards of Practice compliant.

RESOURCE REPOSITORY INDEX

Value and Effectiveness Resources for Organizational Ombuds

Working Papers for Comment

I. Introductory Materials

II. Ideas for Two Checklists, in Addition to the Ombuds Database

III. Ideas about Collecting, Assessing, Using, and Communicating Organizational Ombuds (OO) Data Within OO Standards of Practice 

IV. Additional Resource Lists for Office Databases, OO Checklists, and Paper-and-Pencil Notes

V.    AI and Ombuds Work

VI.    Mediation: An Additional Source of Ombuds Value and Effectiveness (These resources are offered in response to OOs who asked for more ideas specifically about communicating the value of the mediation function in ombuds practice.)

VII.   Research Bibliography about the Value and Effectiveness of Organizational Ombuds

VIII.   Acknowledgments