In the event of war, civilian authorities are faced with difficult trade-offs. Among other things, it's about choosing what can be given lower priority – and what needs to be prioritised.
The Government has now commissioned the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) to strengthen and develop support to civil authorities, and the work will be reported to the Government as early as 1 March.
"We see that the work of building a war organisation and taking responsibility for its own continuity planning would need to go faster at many emergency preparedness authorities that have socially important tasks," says Carl-Oskar Bohlin.
The goal is to give the civilian authorities increased tools to be able to transition to a war organisation during a period of heightened alert.
"It's about clearly defining which activities are important to war, and which activities we can plan away. It's also about ensuring that you have staff.
Carl-Oskar Bohlin was one of the speakers at Society and Defence's national conference in Sälen and in his speech on Sunday he stressed the importance of all residents of the country taking into account the deteriorating security situation.
"There could be a war in Sweden," he said.
Do you think that the population has not realized the serious security situation?
"I think there's a great deal of awareness that there's a war going on in our immediate vicinity, but of course it always tends to be the case that people push things away because it's difficult and uncomfortable, that they think it's happening there and not here. But everyone needs to realise that it can also happen here," says Carl-Oskar Bohlin.