Most Swedish municipalities have established whistleblower channels

After the new EU-rules on whistleblowing and whistleblower channels came into force this summer in Sweden, most Swedish municipalities have established systems for reporting misconduct.

In most municipalities, solutions have been chosen that enable anonymous reporting and provide support for the handling process, even if the legislation only requires guaranteeing confidentiality linked to whistleblower cases.

• It's a lot about creating trust in the system among everyone who should be able to report, says Andreas Wahlström, who has helped around fifty municipalities establish whistleblower solutions. An anonymous channel is a signal that you as an organization are more interested in solving the misbehavior than in who has reported.

Regarding the staffing of the whistleblower solutions, it is common for municipalities to work with internal resources for the processing. External investigative assistance is usually engaged only when there is a concrete risk of conflicts of interest.

For many municipalities (for example Borgholm, example in Swedish) are now starting to work on getting the information out to the parties concerned, in order to start the work of dealing with the irregularities that are discovered and hopefully building long-term better organizational cultures.