Streamline Sweden government to save billions

Dagens Industri

13 December 2010

Message for the Swedish government:

The Swedish national budget has been a main topic of debate in the Swedish parliament. Although there are potentially hundreds of billions of Swedish Krona (SEK) of government money to allocate, it is thought that the state authorities alone costs around 200 billion SEK per year. In November the new Swedish government took the initiative to create a central department of government finance and personnel. This is one initiative that will save resources if it is implemented.

Sweden has an effective state administration but there is great potential for further efficiency and for governments to have even greater ability to move resources from one area to another. Studies and interviews conducted by PA Consulting Group have identified some steps that would lead to an efficiency increase of 10 percent, representing an additional 20 billion SEK annually for the government coffers.

Five actions PA Consulting Group identified to help Swedish authorities streamline further are:

• Demonstrate and control a vision of 'development'. Government managers need to communicate a clear vision to their employees

• Enable authorities to be headed by smaller management teams, making the work more efficient

• Follow up and revise their own operations regularly and often

• Emphasise the importance of the ongoing work with the change in the authorities

• Collaborating and sharing experiences with other authorities will contribute to achieving higher efficiency.

Sweden has for many years distinguished itself internationally as an effective and administratively well-developed country. There is a strong national pride in the efficient government administration. However, we need to realise we are not that outstanding anymore. Many other countries have very sophisticated programmes to make government agencies more efficient. Therefore, Sweden has a lot of opportunities from around the world to find examples and experiences that can inspire our programmes.

To find out more about how PA is working with governments around the world, contact us now.