National Service Personnel Administration - Past, Present, and Future. An Overview

Summary of the article by Jan Warren and Jan Tånneryd in RSAWSPJ no 6 2001.

The article is the annual study 2001 of The Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences, Section for Other Sciences of Importance to the National Defence, presented to the Academy on 16th October 2001

The Government’s new set of directives regarding Sweden’s Total Defence as presented in the Defence Resolution in the spring of 2000 raised the important issue of personnel. The Swedish Armed Forces had, as early as 1998, reported that the officer recruitment system did not meet the new demands.

The Government decided to set up two fact-finding committees whose findings were later to be amalgamated into the 1998 National Service Personnel Report and the 1999 Armed Forces Personnel Recruitment and Supply Report.

The two committees have now completed their reports and presented their findings. During the autumn of 2001, a government bill was submitted to Parliament to be passed during spring 2002.

This annual study deals with the new changes that are needed within the field of personnel and the resulting consequences. We have chosen to confine our presentation as follows. First we will discuss the history of the system of compulsory duty, its development and its future, and after that the Swedish Armed Forces’ need for changes within the personnel system itself. Several important fields have had to be left out in this report. Manpower for civilian preparedness in the Total Defence is one of several examples.

To us authors it is obvious that the foundations of our personnel system have to rest on a system of compulsory conscription. The reasons for this are many, but the most important one is that this is the only system open to a small nation like ours and which, furthermore, provides us with an opportunity to enrol those who are the best prepared and eligible. It is thus by definition a system which ensures that what we get is personnel of high quality. The system also forms the best possible basis not only for the recruitment of competent officers; it also facilitates recruiting policy for rapid deployment forces, the rescue services and for our various international commitments. In addition, it may serve as a means of assisting the personnel recruitment process in all parts of Sweden. For, truth to tell, today’s peacetime structure of the Swedish Armed Forces could not very well be maintained in any other way. It is for instance a well-known fact that the northern part of Sweden is not self-sufficient when it comes to personnel.

In the restructured Swedish Armed Forces, competence has to be increased at all levels within the organisation - from private to general. At the same time, the Armed Forces must be able to develop new competences in different fields, sustain needed competences and get rid of old, no longer needed competences. That means being able to recruit, train and keep skilled personnel and, at the same, bringing to an end the period of employment for those no longer needed. This is a very difficult task for any organisation, especially when faced with such sweeping changes as in the Swedish Armed Forces.

The future for the Armed Forces is dynamic and hard to predict. The challenges consist of diversity, flexibility and adaptability to new needs and standards. Policywise it is a matter of abandoning centrally controlled management of personnel in favour of a system of individually planned development of skills and careers and doing so in close collaboration with the people employed.

In order to deal with the future, a comprehensive view is of paramount importance. In the new Swedish Armed Forces there will be a need for new, often civilian competences to meet the new challenges. New categories of personnel are needed such as reserve/substitute soldiers, and there will also be a new role for reserve officers.

To sum up, we need: