Digital Transformation and the Swiss Federal System: Shake, Do Not Stir?

Abstract The unique character of the Swiss institutional system based on decentralized federalism, consensual government and direct democracy has been considered one of the building blocks of the Swiss success story. Switzerland regularly scores high in the matters of private innovation (WIPO, 2022), quality of life (Numbeo, 2023), happiness (Helliwell et al., 2022), human development (UNDP, 2022) and other indicators evaluating the level of countries’ development. However, there is at least one area in which Switzerland is not the best student: digitalization of its public administration (European Commission, 2022; UN, 2022). Numerous issues, such as the lack of innovative leaders, of political support and of know-how, organizational resistance to change and the high quality of existing public service provision are to blame for the unfavorable ranking of the country (Cahlikova, 2021). However, the effects of many of them can be linked to the federal system and the inter-governmental division of powers it implies in different policy fields, digitalization included.