Parts of the eHealth Agency relocate to Kalmar

Yesterday, Prime Minister Löfvén and Minister for Civil Affairs Shekarabi announced that the Swedish eHealth Agency will be relocated to Kalmar.

When you read what our Prime Minister says: "This is part of the work to increase the state's presence throughout the country and ensure that the state takes its responsibility for a Sweden that holds together. People, towns and entire villages should not be abandoned by the state.", one can't help but wonder whether this is actually what is being done in principle anyway. On what grounds has Kalmar been chosen? Or opted out of Umeå? Or some other medium-sized Swedish city, any city. It might even have strengthened the feeling of a cohesive Sweden if they had chosen to move the authority to Rinkeby instead. We will never know...

In any case, it is clear that this move will have consequences for eHealth work in the future. Questions that arise are;

• How will you manage to keep all the work together with other authorities and businesses, when most of them are in Stockholm?
• And how can you, in a competent way, succeed in the feat of developing a relatively new business where most of the key skills have been recruited in Stockholm?

In any case, there is an imminent risk of losing important momentum in this work, which is so important and prioritized for Swedish welfare. One might think that resources should be put to better use than moving a functioning authority out of Stockholm. An authority that has come a long way in recruiting key competencies and has just started to pick up the pace in its work to achieve the government's goal of becoming a world leader in eHealth.