Riksrevisionen

Swedish National Audit Office

Oversight of law enforcement agencies - An audit of the Swedish Commission on Security and IntegrityProtection

2016 SE2016integrityProtectionSCSIP
SCALE
  • - The Commission supervises the following law enforcement agencies; the Police Authority, the Swedish Security Service, the National Economic Crimes Bureau, the Swedish Prosecution Authority and the Swedish Customs Service. The activities of these agencies is to a great extent subject to secrecy and restricted transparency. Consequently, to maintain public confidence it is important that the activities are legally secure and that supervision is appropriate and effective.
COMPLIANCE FOCUS
  • - Act on Qualified Assumed Identities
  • - government bills
  • - reports
PERFORMANCE ASPECT
  • - effectiveness and appropriateness of activities
  • - conditions to enable the activities
  • - results of supervision
VALUES INVOLVED
  • - Community: reputation, safety
  • - Regulatory system: norms and standards
1. Goal-setting - Requirements

The audit shows that the regulations that exist, with some exceptions, are clearly formulated and that objectives are specified for the Commission on Security and Integrity Protection in its appropriation directions. However, the Government has not expressed any level of ambition for the organisation, in the form of volume of supervisory cases per year, or views on the Commission’s current dimensioning of activities . This means that it is not possible to evaluate the organisation’s achievement of objectives on the basis of quantitative targets.

2. Responsibility - Scope

there is a lack of clarity on what should be included in the administrative support that the Swedish Security Service is to provide to the Delegation. The Commission on Security and Integrity Protection has also pointed out that there is uncertainty as to which of the agencies receives, draws up and retains certain documents in a records checks case.

3. Design - Capacity task balance

The increased number of checks at the request of individuals has in recent years claimed an increased amount of the Commission's resources at the expense of supervisory activities. The Swedish NAO assesses that the Commission’s self-initiated supervisory activities constitutes an important part of its remit. If these activities have to give way too much there is a risk that the Commission on Security and Integrity Protection will not fulfil its remit.

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The items above were selected and named by the e-Government Subgroup of the EUROSAI IT Working Group on the basis of publicly available report of the author Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI). In the same way, the Subgroup prepared the analytical assumptions and headings. All readers are encouraged to consult the original texts by the author SAIs (linked).