GOOD GOVERNANCE FOR
DEVELOPMENT IN ARAB COUNTRIES
INITIATIVE
WORKING GROUP 1 ON CIVIL SERVICE AND
INTEGRITY
6th december 2006
Agency governance in the
Swedish state administration
Knut Rexed
Former Director General
Swedish Agency for Public Management
The four public powers
in Sweden
 The Parliament adopts all laws, approves all
taxes and allocates all revenues
 The Government presents proposals to the
Parliament and issues instructions to
Government agencies
 The Administration executes all instructions
and applies the laws
 The Administrative Courts try all appeals
against the decisions of Government
agencies
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The public administration
in Sweden
 No central authority
 A small government office serving the 22
ministers (about 4 000 employees in 10
ministeries)
 More than 200 separately managed
government agencies
 21 regional councils and 280 local
authorities that are not under direct
government control
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The limits to the
government’s powers
 All government decisions have to be taken by
the Council of Ministers
 A single minister cannot take any decision
except when specifically authorised by the
Council of Ministers
 All instructions to the government agencies
have to be in writing
 All instructions to the government agencies
have to made public, unless covered by the
Secrecy Act
 The government is forbidden to interfere in an
agency’s interpretation or application of the
law
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The format for
agency governance
 The Agency Act provides a set of general rules
 A permanent instruction for each agency
provides the mission and framework
 An annual instruction for each agency
provides monetary resources, goals and
targets
 Ad hoc instructions provides specific
additional tasks
 Agencies are evaluated on an ad hoc basis
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After four decades of
management reforms:
 All management decisions are devolved to the
agency concerned, including human resource
management
 An agency can have an Executive Board with
external members
 Agencies without an Executive Board are run
by their Director General
 All agencies provide an annual report on
results and on resource use
 Director Generals are appointed for a term of
six years with no guarantees for continued
employment after that
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Human Resource Management
in Government Agencies
 Employment and conditions are regulated by
the normal labour laws (including a general
law on employment protection)
 Each agency recruits and trains its own
employees
 Agencies set the wages for their employees
and co-operate through the State Employer’s
Agency
 Agencies only receive a standard compensation for wage and other price increases
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How was it possible?
 Continuous change through an reform
process where each step was evaluated before
the next step was taken
 Strong civil service values are thoroughly
internalised, leading to strong reactions
against any maluse of public authority
 A corps of professional public managers with
clear incentives to achieve results
 A free press with free access to public documents provides an efficient monitoring,
leading to a very low level of corruption
 Strong trade unions for public employees that
were partners in the reforms
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Today’s main challenges
 Creating a networked administration
where agencies, regional councils and
local authorities work together in
serving the citizens
 Reviewing and simplifying the agency
structure
 Improving the abilility to set effective
and appropriate result targets
 Improving the procedures for the
selection of Director Generals
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