Majority of complaints about Israeli public service justified – comptroller

Nearly 60% of complaints about public service made to the State Comptroller’s Office between 2019 and 2024 were justified, according to a report by Comptroller Matanyahu Englman released Tuesday.

This is significantly higher than the general average of justified complaints in the same years, 43.8%, the office added.The report examined some of the nearly 35,000 complaints made to the office between January 2019 and March 2024 – around 30% of which were about service to the public.

The public bodies with the most complaints against them included the Transportation Ministry, with 4227 complaints; the Population and Immigration Authority, with 2,875 complaints; and the Health Ministry, with 1,993 complaints.

The organizations about whom the highest proportion of complaints had to do with public service included the Foreign Ministry, where nearly 70% of complaints were about public services, and the Bank of Israel, where almost 68% of complaints were about public services.

The bodies with the highest number of justified complaints against them included the National Security Ministry, with the report finding that almost 80% of complaints against them were justified. The report also noted that the ministry was added to this list after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War due to a large number of complaints about gun licensing.

The Health Ministry also had a high rate of justified complaints targeted at it, with 63.6% of complaints found to be justified.

Failures to uphold judicial decisions

The report also highlighted complaints about public bodies’ failures to uphold judicial decisions.

The Population and Immigration Authority was found to have a rate of 84.6% justified complaints about failures to uphold a court decision, and Israel Police were found to have a rate of 61.1%.

The highest proportion of justified complaints about the behavior of public servants was found to be in the Education Ministry, where 28% of these complaints were found to be justified.

The comptroller’s office concluded the report with a set of working recommendations for the public aimed at building a better public sector for Israelis.

“Israeli citizens pay high taxes that fund the public sector. Public servants must provide good service that is efficient and affable to all,” said Englman.

“The need to provide good service is stressed especially during the Israel-Hamas War, a time when hundreds of thousands of citizens are under constant threat and [are] dependent on government bodies.”