Operating manual — STAAC Grievance Redress Mechanism

This manual describes how a complaint is recorded, classified, routed, handled and closed. Every table in it is read from the ruleset the system is running on, so it describes what the software will actually do rather than what it was intended to do when somebody last wrote a manual.

It is written for the officer operating the system. Anyone may read it — a grievance mechanism that will not publish its own procedure is asking to be trusted rather than checked — but it is not a guide to making a complaint. To do that, use the public reporting form, any Inspectorate office, or the toll-free line, and keep the tracking number you are given.

How the mechanism works

A complaint is recorded on one of four channels and becomes a case with a tracking number. It is classified — what it is about, and how serious — and that classification is read against a published matrix to decide which level of government handles it. Somebody is named as answerable. The case is worked, resolved and closed, and the complainant is told what was decided.

Four things run underneath all of that and are worth understanding before the detail:

The rules are data, not code

Categories, severities, the routing matrix, the service standards, the roles and the conflict rules are published as a versioned ruleset. A case is pinned to the version in force when it was registered and is handled under that version for its whole life, so republishing the rules never changes what was already decided. This manual reads the version in force now.

Clocks run in parallel, from the day the complaint arrived

A case does not have one deadline. It has several obligations that all start the day it was received and run at the same time with different allowances. Answering a complaint on time does not undo an acknowledgement that never went; a late acknowledgement cannot be made good.

An exclusion is silent

Where the conflict rules close a case to an officer, the case does not appear in their lists, searches, counts or notifications, and they are not told it exists. This is deliberate: telling somebody that there is a case they may not see tells them there is a case.

Resolved is not closed

A case is resolved when the office has acted on it. It is closed when the complainant has been told what was decided. Those are separate steps with separate clocks, and a case that has been resolved and never fed back is not a finished case.

How a complaint arrives

How the system works

How a complaint arrives

Drawn from the process, not generated. The channel is recorded on the case and reported on, but it changes nothing about how the case is handled: a complaint from a handset and one from a counter are the same case with the same clocks.

Whichever channel it came in on, the complainant is given a tracking number and can use it to ask about the case without an account. The channel is recorded and reported on, but it changes nothing about how the case is handled.

The case lifecycle

From the ruleset

The case lifecycle

Generated from the published status table and its transition graph. Every arrow is a move the system permits; a move not drawn here is one it refuses. Green boxes are endings: a case in one is over unless the complainant comes back to us, which every status here allows — nothing in this mechanism is closed beyond reopening.

Every status, and what the ruleset allows next. This table is the authoritative form of the diagram above.
Status	Code	What it means	Allowed next
Received	RECEIVED	Intake complete, case ID issued, tracking number returned.	Acknowledged, Rejected as duplicate
Acknowledged	ACKNOWLEDGED	Complainant told the case exists and what happens next.	Triaged
Triaged	TRIAGED	Category, severity, subject and handling authority set. Conflict rules evaluated.	Referred, Under mediation, Under investigation, Closed as information
Referred	REFERRED	Assigned to a named officer at the handling authority.	Under mediation, Under investigation, Resolved, Re-referred
Under mediation	UNDER_MEDIATION	ADR or CMG mediation in progress.	Resolved, Referred, Under investigation
Under investigation	UNDER_INVESTIGATION	Pushed to CMS+. Status mirrored back, detail not.	Resolved, Closed as not substantiated
Resolved	RESOLVED	Action taken and recorded, with evidence.	Closed, Reopened
Closed	CLOSED	Complainant informed and, where contactable, satisfaction recorded.	Reopened
Resolved at source	RESOLVED_AT_SOURCE	Retroactively logged by a CMV. Already settled before it entered the system.	Closed, Reopened, Escalated on review
Reopened	REOPENED	Complainant returned, or the same issue recurred on the same sub-project.	Any handling status
Withdrawn	WITHDRAWN	Complainant withdrew. Reason recorded.	Reopened
Referred out	REFERRED_OUT	Outside project and IG jurisdiction. Handed to a line ministry or agency with a receipt.	Closed

Case classifications

What a case is about, and how serious it is, are two separate decisions. Together they decide which office handles it and which service standard it runs under, so classifying a case wrongly sends it to the wrong place at the wrong speed. A case that has not been classified cannot leave triage at all.

Severities

Read from the published severity table, least to most serious.
Severity	Code	Definition	Handled between
Administrative	ADMINISTRATIVE	No breach of law. Resolvable by mediation, information or local administrative action.	T0 to T2
Serious	SERIOUS	Breach of project rules or of duty, or material loss, but not prima facie criminal. Referred to local government or IG regional office.	T2 to T4
Criminal	CRIMINAL	Prima facie breach of the law: corruption, embezzlement, procurement fraud, GBV. IG jurisdiction.	T4 to T5

The 16 categories this ruleset publishes. The default severity is what triage starts from; an officer may change it, and the change is recorded against the case.
Code	Category	Default severity	Sub-categories
C01	Procurement irregularity	Criminal	Deviation from guidelines · single-bidder award · contract splitting · price inflation · conflicted award
C02	Ghost beneficiaries, workers or projects	Criminal	Ghost beneficiary · ghost worker · ghost sub-project · duplicate registration
C03	Embezzlement or diversion of funds	Criminal	Embezzlement · theft by conversion · diversion to non-project use
C04	Bribery or solicitation	Criminal	Solicitation by officer · facilitation payment demanded · kickback
C05	Shoddy or incomplete works	Serious	Substandard works · abandoned works · wrong specification · no value for money
C06	Delayed or non-receipt of funds or inputs	Serious	Grant delayed · inputs not delivered · partial delivery
C07	Targeting and selection irregularity	Serious	Wrongful exclusion · wrongful inclusion · PMT score dispute · list manipulation
C08	Payment not received or short payment	Serious	Non-payment · short payment · payment to wrong number · agent deduction
C09	Staff conduct or abuse of office	Serious	Abuse of office · neglect of duty · harassment by officer · discrimination
C10	Interference by officials	Serious	Political interference · interference in selection · intimidation of CMV
C11	Environmental and social	Serious	Land and resettlement · environmental damage · labour conditions · child labour
C12	GBV, SEA and SH	Criminal	Sexual exploitation · sexual abuse · sexual harassment · other GBV
C13	Protected disclosure (whistleblower)	Criminal	Disclosure under the Whistleblowers Protection Act CAP 34
C14	Household or group dispute	Administrative	Boundary dispute · group conflict · CPMC dispute · share of works
C15	Information request or clarification	Administrative	Request for project information · eligibility query · process question
C16	Other	Administrative	Uncategorised at intake

Case routing

How the system works

The triage and routing decision

The decision is drawn from the process; the matrix it reads is published rule data and is set out in full in the table below. The substitution loop is what stops a case being routed to a tier where every officer is locked out of it.

Handling tiers

The levels a case can be handled at, junior to senior. A tier is an office, never a person: who at that office holds a particular case comes from the officer register.
Tier	Authority	Level	Handles
T0	CMV and CMG	Village and parish	Mediation, information, resolved at source
T1	Parish Chief	Parish	Local administrative action
T2	ACDO and Sub-county Chief	Sub-county	Sub-county administrative action, input and payment issues
T3	CAO and District Desk Officer	District	District administrative action, works quality, targeting
T4	IG Regional Office	Sub-region	Triage, compliance visits, ADR, preliminary enquiry
T5	IG Headquarters, DPRMC	National	Corruption, procurement, high-value, cross-district, IG and OPM subjects
EXT	External agency	National	ODPP, CID, PPDA, FIA, URA, OAG, line ministry, project safeguards

The routing matrix

Category and severity decide the handling tier, who is copied, where it escalates and which service standard the clocks run under. This table is the rule — the system reads these same rows.
Category	Severity	Handled by	Copied to	Escalates to	Standard
C01 Procurement irregularity	Criminal	T5 IG HQ	IG Regional Office	D/IGG, then ODPP or PPDA	SLA_CRIM
C02 Ghost beneficiaries, workers or projects	Criminal	T4 IG Regional	IG HQ, NUSAF MIS flag	T5 IG HQ	SLA_CRIM
C03 Embezzlement or diversion of funds	Criminal	T5 IG HQ	IG Regional Office	D/IGG, then ODPP or CID	SLA_CRIM
C04 Bribery or solicitation	Criminal	T4 IG Regional	IG HQ	T5 IG HQ	SLA_CRIM
C05 Shoddy or incomplete works	Serious	T3 District (CAO)	IG Regional Office, project Desk Officer	T4 IG Regional	SLA_SER
C06 Delayed or non-receipt of funds or inputs	Serious	T2 Sub-county	District Desk Officer	T3 District, then T4	SLA_PAY
C07 Targeting and selection irregularity	Serious	T3 District	PCU targeting focal person, IG Regional	T4 IG Regional	SLA_SER
C08 Payment not received or short payment	Serious	T2 Sub-county	District Desk Officer, PCU payments	T3 District, then T4	SLA_PAY
C09 Staff conduct or abuse of office	Serious	T4 IG Regional	CAO unless conflicted	T5 IG HQ	SLA_SER
C10 Interference by officials	Serious	T4 IG Regional	IG HQ	T5 IG HQ	SLA_SER
C11 Environmental and social	Serious	T3 District	Project safeguards focal person	T4 IG Regional	SLA_SER
C12 GBV, SEA and SH	Criminal	GBV Desk (sealed)	None. No copy is ever made.	Secretary to Inspectorate	SLA_GBV
C13 Protected disclosure (whistleblower)	Criminal	T5 IG HQ	None	D/IGG	SLA_CRIM
C14 Household or group dispute	Administrative	T0 CMV and CMG	Parish Chief on referral only	T1 Parish, then T2	SLA_ADM
C15 Information request or clarification	Administrative	T0 CMV and CMG	None	T4 IG Regional if unanswered	SLA_ADM
C16 Other	Administrative	Triage holds	None	Cannot leave triage unclassified	SLA_ADM

When the tier the matrix names cannot take the case

The matrix names a level, not a person. If the conflict rules have closed the case to everybody the register places at that level covering that place, the tier is not a handling authority for this case however clearly the matrix names it — and the authority substitutes upward a rung at a time until one has somebody free. That substitution is recorded on the case with the rule that caused it, so a reader can always see why a case is being handled a level higher than the matrix says.

Service standards and the clocks

Each routing rule names a service standard. The standard sets how long each obligation has, counted in working days under the Inspectorate’s own calendar — not calendar days, and not the reader’s idea of a working week.

They run at the same time, not one after another

This is the thing most often misread. The obligations below all start on the day the complaint was received and run together. An open response window does not clear an acknowledgement that was missed in week one, and the two are counted separately in every report. Where a stage is anchored to something other than receipt — feedback usually runs from the resolution or the determination — the charts say so.

From the ruleset

Service standard SLA_ADM

Generated from the published service standard. Every bar starts at the same moment — the day the complaint was received — except where a different anchor is marked. They run together, so meeting one late does not make another late and answering late does not undo an acknowledgement that never went.

From the ruleset

Service standard SLA_CRIM

From the ruleset

Service standard SLA_GBV

From the ruleset

Service standard SLA_PAY

From the ruleset

Service standard SLA_SER

Referral and reassignment

How the system works

The referral pipeline

Drawn from the process. The acceptance window comes from the service standard and is published rule data; everything else here is the order in which the steps happen.

A referral is the officer holding a case handing it to a named officer at another institution. The case keeps its original age: nothing about a referral resets a clock, because the complainant has been waiting since the day they reported.

Where a referral is declined, the system raises a task saying the case has nobody answerable for it, carrying the reason and — where the register can name one — a suggested replacement. A decline on conflict grounds also closes that case to the officer who declined it, so they are not offered it again.

Roles and permissions

Being entitled to a case is not the same as being entitled to a name. The system holds three separate questions apart: whether you may know the case exists, whether you may read what was reported, and whether you may see who reported it. A role answers them differently, and a role answers them only inside its own scope.

The 17 roles this ruleset publishes. “Unsealed” excludes cases sealed to a specialist desk; “on consent” means the complainant has to have agreed to their identity reaching that officer.
Role	Scope	Case content	Complainant identity	Subject identity
Community Monitoring Volunteer Sees resolution outcome to relay. Never sees a named officer subject.	Own parish	Own cases only	Own cases only	Never
CMG Chairperson Can reassign within the CMG under COI-05.	Own parish	CMG cases	Own cases only	Never
IG Project Officer Fallback digitiser. Counter-book reconciliation.	District	Yes, unsealed	On consent	No
IG Project Supervisor Supervises officers, cannot close cases they handled.	Sub-region	Yes, unsealed	On consent	No
IG Regional Triage Officer Primary triage layer.	Sub-region	Yes, unsealed	Yes	Yes, T4 and below
IG HQ Triage Officer Handles criminal, cross-district, IG and OPM subjects.	National	Yes, unsealed	Yes	Yes
IG HQ Casework Officer Development and central-casework profile. May view and triage cases nationally; handling actions still require an explicit assignment.	National	Yes	Yes	Yes
IG Investigator Cases pushed to CMS+. Reads back status only.	Assigned cases	Yes	Yes	Yes
GBV Desk Officer Cannot see any non-C12 case. Sealed both ways.	National, C12 only	C12 only	C12 only	C12 only
DPRMC Coordinator Reporting and coordination. Not a handling role.	National	Yes, unsealed	No	Yes
D/IGG and Secretary to Inspectorate Override authority under COI-10, two-person.	National	Yes, unsealed	On override	Yes
Local Government Handling Officer Parish Chief, ACDO, Sub-county Chief, CAO, Desk Officer.	Own jurisdiction	Assigned cases only	On consent	Own case only
Call Centre Agent Creates and reads back tracking number. No case list.	National	Intake only	At intake	No
NUSAF PCU Viewer Counts, case ages, SLA performance. No content, no identities, ever.	National	No	No	No
World Bank Task Team Viewer Aggregate indicators only.	National	No	No	No
Data Protection Officer Reads the access log and the exposure report, not the cases.	National	Metadata only	No	No
System Administrator Manages accounts and configuration. Cannot read case content. Every action logged.	National	No	No	No

Conflict of interest

The mechanism exists partly to handle complaints against officials, so it has to be able to keep a case away from the person it is about and from everybody above them. That is done by rule, not by judgement, and it is done silently.

The conflict rules this ruleset publishes, in the order they are applied.
Rule	Triggered by	Effect
COI-01 Named subject lockout	Any user account whose officer record matches a named subject on the case.	All access denied: the case does not appear in any list, search, count, export or notification for that user.
COI-02 Reporting-line lockout	Any user in the named subject's reporting line at or below the subject, and any user in the same office unit at or below the subject's grade.	All access denied. Applies to the subject's own staff, not to their superiors.
COI-03 Tier-above assignment	Every case with a named officer subject.	The handling authority must sit at least one administrative tier above the subject's tier, and outside the subject's reporting line.
COI-04 Geographic bypass	Subject holds office at parish or sub-county level.	Routing skips the bypassed tiers entirely rather than passing through them and being blocked.
COI-05 CMV relationship declaration	Intake by a CMV where the CMV declares, or the register shows, a family, employment or business relationship to the subject.	The CMV may record the case but cannot see it after submission, cannot be assigned follow-up, and cannot deliver the feedback. The case reassigns to another CMV in the CMG, or direct to the IG regional office where the whole CMG is conflicted.
COI-06 IG internal subject	Named subject is IG staff.	The regional office in which the subject serves is excluded in full. The case routes to IG HQ, Ombudsman function, under the Secretary to the Inspectorate.
COI-07 OPM and PCU subject	Named subject is OPM or PCU staff, including MIS administrators.	IG HQ only. No project-system user may see the case. The NUSAF MIS integration is suppressed for this case: no push, no status sync, no counts.
COI-08 No self-handling and no self-closure	Any case.	A user cannot assign a case to themselves where they are named. A user cannot approve closure of a case they personally resolved. Closure approval sits one role above the handling officer.
COI-09 Escalation skip	SLA breach escalation where the next officer in the escalation chain is locked out on this case.	The system skips to the next eligible officer up the chain and records the skip and its reason on the case.
COI-10 Override	A named authority needs access despite a lockout.	Two-person authorisation at D/IGG level with a typed reason. The override is written to the case timeline in plain sight, is not removable, and notifies the Data Protection Officer.
COI-11 Anonymity is orthogonal	Anonymous or protected-disclosure case.	Conflict rules evaluate on the subject only. Complainant identity is never a routing input and is never disclosed to apply a rule.
COI-12 Retrospective recalculation	A subject is added, changed or removed after intake, including at triage or during investigation.	Access is recalculated immediately. Any user who viewed the case before the change and is now locked out is listed on an exposure report to the Data Protection Officer.
COI-13 GBV desk seal	Category C12.	Case content, complainant identity and subject identity are visible only to GBV Desk Officers. All other roles, including D/IGG and system administrators, see case ID, district, date, status and nothing else. Export, print and bulk download are disabled on the category.
COI-14 Lockout is silent	Any locked-out user.	The case is absent, not forbidden. No 'access denied' message, no placeholder row, no count that changes.

The register, in numbers

How much the mechanism is being used, across the whole country. These are national totals and are published deliberately: a grievance mechanism that will not say how many grievances it has received is asking to be trusted rather than checked.

12cases on the register

3awaiting triage

0concluded

19service standard breaches recorded

Nothing here can be broken down. There is no figure on this page for a district, a category, an office or a person, and that is what makes publishing it safe: a national total says how much the mechanism is used, while a figure for one small district could point at a single complaint and the people in it.