The Waste Ombudsman
In 2018, an election year in Sweden, The Swedish Taxpayers Association decided to scale up their Slöseriombudsman – The Waste Ombudsman. The project started in 2010 disclosing the extensive waste of the taxpayers’ money and showing the potential that exists to lower the internationally high Swedish taxes. It also scrutinizes political proposals and actions at the local and national level and puts the focus on waste and corruption by highlighting examples both in traditional media and social media. The Waste Ombudsman has over 80 000 followers on Facebook, quite high for Swedish standards. The examples that are highlighted are either issues that the media has been reporting about, that The Waste Ombudsman follows up on, or audits that The Waste Ombudsman does.
Recently an extensive report on Waste in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second biggest city, known for wasting the taxpayers’ money, was presented. The report elaborated by a well-known writer and intellectual living in Gothenburg is partly crowd funded and believed to create a lot of resonance both in Gothenburg and in the national debate.
