A description of the year in brief discusses the Office workload (with a two-year caseload comparison), staff turnover, case management, the United States Ombudsman Association, and a model Ombudsman Act for State Government. The Office's current issues during 1996-97 were prison complaints and privatization. The report also includes selected case summaries and statistical tables: (1) Numbers and Types of Inquiries; (2) Means By Which Inquiries Are Received; (3) Distribution of Population and Inquirers by Residence; (4) Distribution of Types of Inquiries by Residents of Various Counties; (5) City and County of Honolulu Means of Receipt and Types of Inquiries by Month; (6) Neighbor Island Counties and Out-of-State Means of Receipt and Types of Inquiries; (7) Complaint Disposition; (8) Sustained Complaint Disposition; (9) Information Inquiries; (10) No Jurisdiction Exclusions; and (11) Inquiries Carried Over (from fiscal year 1995-96) and Their Dispositions and Inquiries Carried Over to Fiscal Year 1997-98. Tables, appendix, references