Growing administration and increasing bureaucracy

When we started, the relationship was not at all good and they thought we, the employer, essentially had just disregarded them and made our own decisions, ignoring them.

She explained that one of the two unions now had its third chairman in a year, and that this affected co-operation. She added: “Start-up processes take a lot of time and probably should be allowed to do so.”

Vagueness and insecurity (Swedish: otydlighet och otrygghet) were described as two words characterizing the situation at RiR, in the action plan. This stated that most measures shall be undertaken within 1½ years and that a new employee survey shall be conducted during the autumn of 2005.

In parallel with the ABA project, there was a Strategy Project, focused on vision, goals and strategies for RiR. Results from this project were presented on 27 September, 2004.

Towards the end of December, the 3AG agreed on a final action plan.

This encompassed measures on both central level and department level.

The Director of Information, Ashley, was put in charge of the ABA Group and the co-ordination of measures for improvement. From February, 2005, she was assigned to allocate 50% of her time for this.

Ashley listened to personnel, and employees expressed trust in her. Her assignment included “coaching or making things happen and also acting as some kind of controller, making sure that all strategic projects retained direction and speed”, she explained (20 January, 2006).

4.5.3 Growing administration and increasing

With a Deputy Director-General, they would no longer report directly to the 3AG, but to him instead, and thus they would no longer be part of the management group. The managers argued that it would be difficult finding competent people for these positions in the future, given this structure. They also agreed that the 3AG had not handled the process around the choice to change the organization design very well;

I think leadership was very bad in this particular case. […] They meant that they had a problem with co-ordination, then they solved the problem themselves, and presented a complete solution and in the next minute you talk about involvement. It is a very good example of how you should not act. In that case you say that ‘we do not think that this works, have you any suggestions regarding to how it can be solved?’.

said one of the managers.

Several managers claimed that a risk with appointing a Deputy Director-General was that their functions became understood as administration, rather than as units of strategic importance. Human resources was one of these areas. Lauren explained (13 October, 2006) that there would be nobody in the management group with competence in this specific area. She also added that it was a totally new situation for her, not to be part of the management group, and she described it as “a step down”:

When it comes to strategic issues I have had direct contact with the Auditor-Generals, but now I am no longer allowed to have that.

There were also protests when Bill was appointed to the position.

Protests were raised by administrative department managers. The personnel who had got to know Bill during his years as a manager at RRV described how they were very surprised to see this appointment, and he did not have much support among them either. Again, protests were ignored. His mandate expired 1½ years later, and despite of new protests from both unions and department managers, the 3AG chose to extend his employment contract. (The newly appointed Auditor-General Brooke explained in interviews how she had not supported this decision, but had to submit to it, as she was outvoted by her fellow Auditors-General in the matter.)

During the spring, personnel became increasingly annoyed with what they meant was a rapidly growing administrative body. It was highlighted in the first employee attitude survey, and the issue was also discussed in the March, April and May issues of the internal newsletter KURiREN (2004/03, 2004/04, 2004/05). In the first issue (KURiREN 2005/03), Bill (the Deputy Director-General) responded to the criticism, saying that they were rather under-staffed in the administration, and that more resources were necessary to make sure that all routines and processes functioned well. He explained that there should, however, be room for streamlining and saving in the administration “after the building period”. Management often referred to organization problems as start-up issues, indicating that it was just a matter of normal problems once a new organization is started.

In KURiREN 2005/05 (p.7), a financial auditor had written a letter to the editor, saying:⁵¹

I read in our staff magazine that ’Overhead costs constitute about 52%

of total costs. At the same time last year they were 61%. The two largest items are Management and support within the department, and Offices.’. This statement can be put in relation to the ESV investigation in the area. According to their new report […] it is stated that all overhead costs, in percentage of total costs for authorities, have a mean value of 26%.

The Finance Director responded to the letter, referring to different ways of calculating overhead costs. “Of course it is not good to have an overhead exceeding 50%”, she argued, but just like the Deputy Director-General, she claimed that establishing new routines in the authority required considerable overhead costs:

Other factors that affect the mutual overhead costs is that RiR is still in a build-up phase. The ambition is to act as an example in the public administration, meaning that we continue to develop our routines and guidelines and that we spend a lot of time on this.

51Note that ESV stands for the Swedish National Financial Management Authority (Swedish: Ekonomistyrningsverket)