When former Member of Parliament Anna Starbrink (L) became the Director-General of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, MSB, it received strong criticism. She got the top job despite submitting her application nine months after the deadline.
Now Aftonbladet reports that the recruitment process was deliberately kept secret. In internal material from the agency, Director-General Mikael Frisell motivates the secrecy by saying that Starbrink was a Member of Parliament and what would happen if someone requested the documents.
"It would be chaos in the system", says Frisell, according to Aftonbladet.
It's a administrative culture in decay when you do it like this, says Nils Funcke, journalist and freedom of expression expert to the newspaper.
Funcke believes that the recruitment resembles how security adviser Henrik Landerholm, who is a friend of the Prime Minister, got his job, or when The Moderate Party top Anna Kinberg Batra became the Governor of Stockholm. Both have now been dismissed from their assignments. Funcke emphasizes that the authorities must live up to the requirements set by the constitution.
If you announce a job, then it's the deadline that applies.
The employment of Anna Starbrink was made by the Government Offices and she got the job on February 20, after submitting her application a week earlier. 56 people applied for the job when it was announced.
