Internal documents show dissatisfaction at Swiss intelligence service

FIS Director Christian Dussey has been in office since April 2022 KEYSTONE/© KEYSTONE / ALESSANDRO DELLA VALLE

The employees of the Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) have no confidence in their management. In 2022, there were also almost three times as many redundancies as usual. The FIS hopes to counteract this uncertainty as part of its transformation processes.

The administration is undergoing a transformation process aimed at clarifying issues relating to management, structures, working methods and personnel policy, the FIS told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA in response to an enquiry on Sunday.

The staff survey took place during a phase in which several aspects of this transformation were still in progress, which had led to uncertainty among employees.

As part of the survey, employees complained about bullying, a lack of leadership skills, inefficient work processes, a poor error culture and the inability to make decisions in a timely manner, wrote the NZZ am Sonntag. The newspaper referred to internal FIS documents.

The poor working atmosphere could become a security risk for Switzerland, it continued. Dissatisfied employees would therefore pose a risk of information leaks. There was a risk of betrayal or espionage.

+ Spying game: what does the Swiss intelligence service do?

For its part, the intelligence service noted with satisfaction that the FIS staff felt committed to the service’s mission. In addition, internal security measures were in place to prevent the leakage of classified information, for example.

A staff survey conducted in October last year produced similar results to the internal documents. The FIS scored worse than the Federal Administration average in almost all important areas, reported Swiss public radio, RTS, on Friday. The management of the FIS was rated just 35 out of 100. The average for the rest of the Federal Administration was 61.

The transformation of the intelligence service is being led by FIS Director Christian Dussey, who has been in office since April 2022.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].