Sluggish expansion of civil defence

In 2015, the Government decided to resume planning for total defence. The direction of Sweden’s defence was to be changed – from a primary focus on international operations to building national defence capable of countering an armed attack. For civil defence actors, this meant resuming work that had largely been mothballed for decades.

The Swedish National Audit Office has examined central government management of the revival of civil defence during 2015–2024. The overall conclusion is that the Government has been unclear in its management of the government agencies – in terms of what should be achieved, by whom, when and to what extent. This, in turn, has meant that civil defence capabilities are inadequate in relation to the global landscape, according to most observers.

“The overall objectives of civil defence have not provided any detailed direction for the effort. Nor have the Government’s planning instructions been sufficiently clear about what each government agency is expected to achieve,” says Auditor General Christina Gellerbrant Hagberg.

Furthermore, the Swedish National Audit Office notes that the Government has not sufficiently clarified expectations for the development of civil defence capabilities, either in its regular dialogues with agencies or in other ways.

Civil defence is broken down into a number of sectors of society. The Swedish National Audit Office assesses that planning and capacity-building measures were commenced far too late in several sectors. One exception is the food sector, in which government agencies, at an early stage, prepared documentation that focused on bolstering planning and capabilities throughout the sector.

It was not until 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that the effort to build up civil defence gained real momentum. At that time, Sweden introduced a new structure for civil defence and crisis preparedness, which aims to provide better guidance. The Government also provided substantial financial resources for capacity-enhancing measures.

The audit also shows that some sectors of society lack overall central government leadership, and thus risk causing uncertainty about who is responsible in an actual crisis situation. This is the case for areas such as construction and repair preparedness, and publicly procured public transport.

“The Government should have taken a comprehensive approach across all sectors, involving the business sector at an early stage, defining tasks and allocating funds. In that case, government agencies’ ability to engage in capacity-building would have improved significantly,” says Alexander Rohdin, project leader for the audit.

The slow pace of progress is also due to the fact that funding has been partly short-sighted and irregular, impeding government agencies’ planning and recruitment.

In terms of the Swedish Armed Forces’ and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency’s work to produce documentation for the Government, the Swedish National Audit Office considers that they were too vague in the early period under audit. Only in the last two years has the documentation been made sufficiently precise to serve as a resource for the Government and other government agencies.