ON THE ROLE OF THE OMBUDSMAN FUNCTION
STIMULATING THE ROLE OF THE OMBUDSMAN FUNCTION ON DIGITALISATION
LATEST UPDATE
18 February 2026
Ombudsman launches a draft version of the ‘Ombudsman Principles for Digital Dignity and Fairness’
Link
The Amsterdam Ombudsman launches a draft version of the ‘Ombudsman Principles for Digital Dignity and Fairness’. With this initiative, the Ombudsman wants to help ensure that governments and public bodies treat residents fairly and with dignity when using digital systems and data.
Digital Rights House joined the consultation group to not only come up with the first draft of the principles but also to organise several upcoming consultation sessions.
Links
Letter of Concern: The Ombudsman’s Role in the Digital Era
THE OMBUDSMAN PRINCIPLES FOR DIGITAL DIGNITY AND FAIRNESS (“Amsterdam Principles”) Draft Version 0.1 - 18/2/2026
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS INITIATIVE
Feel free to contact Rosa Louwerse
-----
Selection of consultation sessions
April - Working session on 'Ombudsman Principles for Digital Dignity and Fairness'
May - Contributing to RightsCon26 with a session on 'Strengthening oversight in the digital age: the role of Ombudsman Institutions in protecting citizens rights'
-----
A bit of background
We believe the role of the (municipal) Ombudsman function is very important if not even crucial in times of increased digitalisation.
A question 'Who represents me when everything is digital?' triggered us, Digital Rights House, to start up an exploration program with projects ranging from researching the desired role of the citizen in being able to represent yourself (think of topics like 'Do you own and/or control the data about you' and 'Is it transparent enough in practice what others are doing with your data') to how far can a municipality/government in practice even go in guaranteeing safeguards for citizens in the context of a city/region.
In this exploration numerous opportunities exist to collaborate with us.
We believe strongly a city has an important role to play in these challenging times and therefore we view an increased attention of the Ombudsman function on digitalisation as just another relevant step in raising the digital rights bar.
In this exploration we also explicitly look at the benefits digitalisation brings in making the role of the Ombudsman function effective and how far to go in adopting technologies and the use of data whilst still remaining human first and acknowledging that not everything has to be digital(ised). The Ombudsman function can help raise the digital rights bar. For all people.
SOME EXTRA LINKS FOR INSPIRATION
- Vertel Me Alles (In Dutch)
- Digital Rights House Lecture
- Speech Munish Ramlal 13 September 2024, on the occasion of the 2nd Italian edition of the International Ombudsman Conference on "The role of the Ombudsman as a guardian of right", held in Cassino, Italy
- In Dutch (English available on the site) - De Ombudsman Metropool Amsterdam houdt zich bezig met digitalisering binnen de gemeenten in de metropoolregio https://www.ombudsmanmetropool.nl/nl/digitalisering
Munish Ramlal, Ombudsman Metropool Amsterdam gave the Digital Rights House Lecture
(The spoken lecture was in Dutch / A written version is available in English)
