Cancelled merger preparations

At the same time as RRV personnel, like this auditor, often described themselves as superior to PA, they also often argued that they thought PA felt superior due to their position under Parliament. Ron, the same RRV auditor as above, continued:

Being employed by Parliament, you see, that is high-class. It is kind of the Parliament of the people in some way. You see that when you visit Parliament and then you visit RRV, it is all the difference in the world.

Parliament is more luxurious, there are more rooms, chairs, furniture, cutlery, you have everything you want, library… They can treat themselves more on it and they have treated themselves during the years. […] It is high-class to socialize in the halls of power, in some way.

At PA, auditors described how they liked to work under Parliament, but at the same time they also described their audits as rather independent, despite of the relationship to members of Parliament.

Especially, they emphasized that a broad, general competence and high productivity were important at PA. They were proud to describe that their productivity rates were far higher than at RRV, and argued that considering that it was taxpayers’ money that they were spending, keeping productivity numbers up was a fundamental moral obligation for a national audit institution.

Most PA personnel were aware that Rachel and some other RRV employees claimed that RRV were more independent than PA. These matters are further described by Ahlbäck (1999).

What happened during the first, later shelved, merger preparations process? This will be addressed in the following.

The Parliamentary Board suggested that Parliament should request the Government to assign an investigation for this purpose, focusing on constitutional and organizational aspects around the formation of this new authority. This was formally requested on 15 December, 2000. In May, 2001, a commissioner was assigned by the Government.

Initially, attitudes towards the commissioner and his work were positive, especially from RRV. Gradually this changed. In December, 2001, a report on the necessary constitutional changes was presented, and three months later (March 4, 2002), a report on the organizational aspects (called “Riksrevisionen – organisation och resurser”) was ready.

The same day as it was handed over to the Speaker (Swedish:

talmannen), an information meeting was held for the personnel from RRV and PA, at “Polstjärnan” in Stockholm. During this meeting, the objections that had been raised for some time against the commissioner’s way of working and reasoning, culminated. The dispute concerned the approach applied in the investigation and the way that the analysis was conducted. In interviews, employees (managers as well as non-managers) at RRV and PA, explained how they experienced that their input had been ignored. The commissioner’s suggestions had not been sufficiently anchored to personnel, although instructions from the Committee on the Constitution had said that expertise from both RRV and PA should be engaged (Sveriges riksdag, 2000/01:KU8, p.7).

Ron, an RRV auditor, described the feeling when he, along with his colleagues, left Polstjärnan after this meeting:

I remember when we left that damn Polstjärnan, it was as if a wet blanket had covered the whole assembly somehow. Dammit, it was as low as it could get. We didn’t know where to go, if we should get drunk or go home and save a prayer.

The commissioner had suggested extensive cut-downs, while personnel had expected a much more generous approach, since it was a new, important authority that would be established. The strong sense of disappointment after this meeting was described by personnel at both RRV and PA in numerous interviews. From saluting the merger, personnel now started to doubt that it was such a good idea. An RRV auditor explained that it felt as if the commissioner had already decided that RiR should not be a large organization.

Rachel (the RRV Director-General, interview 5 December, 2002) described the atmosphere after the report had been presented as

“incredibly depressing”. She had raised objections especially to the approach that the commissioner had had in handling personnel and organizational issues, and she talked about “the double lack of responsibility”, meaning that the commissioner had no responsibility in either the current organizations or in the future one.

After a week of discussions, on 13 March, 2002, the Parliamentary Board decided that the Government should be contacted in order to request a transfer of responsibility for the continued investigation from the Government to Parliament. The Parliamentary Ombudsman (Swedish: Justitieombudsmannen, JO) had pointed out that responsibility for organizational issues in the merger should lie with Parliament, not with the Government, as the new authority was to be placed under Parliament. ¹⁹ A delegation (Swedish:

beredningsdelegation) from the Committee on the Constitution was assigned to arrange with the continued/new preparations for RiR.

On 4 April, 2002, responsibility was formally transferred from this commissioner to the Parliamentary Board. On May 29, 2002, the Parliamentary Board assigned a committee, called the National Audit Committee, NAC (Swedish: Riksrevisionskommittén, RRK), to prepare for the merger.

The informal version at RRV and PA, regarding to why responsibility was transferred from the sole commissioner to the NAC, was that people were not content with the results that he presented, and that they were not content with his authoritative management style in merger preparations. George, who was a member of the secretariat in both these merger preparation processes, explained (October, 2003):

Nothing would have prevented authorizing this commissioner and the Government to make decisions on behalf of Parliament, it would not have been a problem, but at the same time there was extensive lobbying courting in the corridors of Parliament, because people did not like the commissioner’s investigation, since it was rather tough – it wanted to cut down, it wanted to terminate international operations, it wanted to close the Uppsala office, and so on. This was the true motive for

19See, for example, the press release from Swedish Parliament, 13 March, 2002.

Parliament to take over. Parliament wanted control over implementation.

He confirmed that the commissioner did not seek support, “instead he decided on his own”, but argued that on the other hand, he was very efficient.

To change the constitution, as necessary for the merger, there had to be two parliamentary decisions with an election between. In June, 2002, the first decision was made. In September, 2002, there was a general election and a second decision was made the same autumn.

Figure 6 shows the last years of decision-making before it was finally agreed that the merger would take place (it actually started off already in the 1980s). It also shows the later cancelled process of merger preparations.

Merger prepar.

kick-off:

This case study starts Merger

proposition.

First merger preparations

(later cancelled) Parliament preparing

to suggest a merger

Year 2002 Year

2001 Year

2000 Year

1999 Year

1998

Merger prepar.

kick-off:

This case study starts Merger

proposition.

First merger preparations

(later cancelled) Parliament preparing

to suggest a merger

Year 2002 Year

2001 Year

2000 Year

1999 Year

1998

Parl. committeeassigned Mergerproposal Requestto Government Commissionerassigned

Figure 6. Time line showing the last years of preparations for a merger decision in Parliament, and the following - later cancelled - merger preparations.

Before entering the saga of the RRV/PA merger, I shall describe the main merger motive, namely independence, in greater detail in the next section.