The effort required to send an acknowledgement of receipt and to send a letter informing a candidate of his/her exclusion from a competition is minimal, especially since such letters can be standardised for the purposes of contacting all relevant candidates. On the other hand, the Ombudsman recognises that the absence of any information would generate significant anxiety for candidates who first, might worry whether their applications had been received, and second, might worry whether they had been successful or not in the competition (even long after the selection process had actually ended).