Bureaucracies work in mysterious ways. Sometimes a prod helps things move a bit faster.

For nearly a year and a half, Canberra businessmen David Stewart and David Parums had tried to get some sort of progress on a complaint they'd asked the ACT Ombudsman to investigate.

Nothing seemed to be moving. Public servants came and went but the investigation into how they had been treated by the ACT government seemed to go nowhere - until The Canberra Times asked the agency why. A bare two days later: there was movement. The Ombudsman has now given it what his spokesperson called "priority assessment".

The everyday saga started when Davids Parums and Stewart, directors of Black Mountain Consultancy Assurance, tried to find out why the company's contracts with the ACT government seemed to hav

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