The Employment Agency is investing heavily in artificial intelligence, AI, which it is hoped can be used in, among other things, assessments of job seekers. This summer, a three-year collaboration was presented with the AI ​​Sustainability Center, a company that works with “the ethical implications of AI”.

At the same time, one of the authority's top executives had held discussions with the company about becoming their adviser - discussions that went so far as to submit an application for the extras to be approved by Director General Mikael Sjöberg.

The manager was the director of a business area and has pushed for a number of digital initiatives. When he submitted his application, he had another heavy, temporary assignment in the leadership of the staff preparing the authority's reform.

He wrote that he would neither work operationally, meet clients nor participate in cooperation with the Employment Service. However, give advice on "how the organization should develop its business model and technical platform".

Approved by the Director-General

The law prohibits secondary jobs that may damage the trust of the authority's impartiality (see fact box), but Mikael Sjöberg concluded that there was no such risk and approved the application.

Today, both AISC and the manager, who were recently purchased from the authority, state that there was never any advice and that he was never involved in the agreement with the Employment Service.

"We had an initial dialogue with NN about an advisory role at AISC that did not lead to any collaboration.", Says the company's CEO Anna Felländer.

"The relationship between AF and AISC was managed by AF's IT department and nothing that I was involved in," writes the head of SVT News.

Easier for chicken farms

Experts are responding to the approval of the extras.

"One has to ask why senior officials at an authority should be advising someone who can become a business partner," says Tommy Iseskog, one of Sweden's most experienced experts in labor law and by-laws.

Olle Lundin, professor of administrative law, says that the space for secondary jobs is very small for senior government officials.

- In such a case, it can very easily arise a suspicion that he could help the company with information. The mere suspicion is sufficient. It feels like a clearly pernicious side job.

So, given that he might be able to get some information that might be of benefit to the company, you should say no?

- Absolutely. It would have been another matter if he had been extra-stingy as a chicken farmer.

The partnership with AISC has so far cost the Employment Service just over 1.8 million.

Mikael Sjöberg has declined to comment on the criticism.