- Continuation and further development of the open government data strategy from 2019 to promote “open data by default” in the federal administration
- Implementation requires legal, financial and organizational measures; specific content of the 2019 – 2022 strategy still being developed
- Federal Council does not consider a specific OGD law to be mandatory; adjustments should primarily be made in existing special laws.
Motion Riklin (17.4246): Continuation of the open government data strategy as of 2019
Submitted text
The Federal Council is requested to promote an Open Government Data (OGD) strategy also in the years from 2019. As stated in the current OGD strategy, the publication of data is to become a mandatory task for the entire federal administration as well as for federal-related companies (“open data by default”). The implementation of the OGD strategy is to be supported with the necessary legal, financial and organizational measures.
Justification
The current Open Government Data (OGD) Strategy 2014 – 2018 is currently being implemented. Numerous measures such as the establishment and operation of a national Open Data platform (opendata.swiss) and the data inventory of the Confederation have already been successfully implemented or are on their way. Other measures, such as the review of the fee policy, have shown that legal adjustments are necessary in order to enable OGD in the area of geodata and meteorological data, for example. Thus, it will also be necessary from 2019 to promote OGD in Switzerland in order to ultimately achieve the vision and planned benefits in the current OGD strategy. For this purpose, an OGD strategy is to be developed from 2019, which, in addition to the measures of the OGD strategy 2014 – 2018 that have not been completed, will also include new measures, such as the introduction of an OGD law, the abolition of fees for data, the publication of existing data under Creative Commons licenses, and the opening of the data inventory to provide an overview of the data that are already accessible and those that are still closed. The publication of data is to become a mandatory task for the entire federal administration as well as federal-related companies by 2020 (“open data by default”) and is to be supported with the necessary legal, financial and organizational measures. In addition, as part of the continuation of the OGD strategy, Switzerland should strive to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP) from 2019 in order to assert Switzerland’s leading role in digitization in this framework as well.
Statement of the Federal Council of 14.2.2018
The adoption of an Open Government Data Strategy Switzerland 2019 – 2022 is a Federal Council goal for 2018. The Open Government Data Strategy 2019 – 2022 will also define the legal, financial and organizational measures required for implementation. It is currently being determined which specific measures and goals will be included in the strategy. It is therefore premature to define these in a binding manner.
The motion’s demand that, in addition to the federal administration, companies close to the federal government should also be obligated to publish their data cannot be implemented on the basis of the current legal situation. However, one objective of the strategy will be to create the most favorable conditions possible for the publication of their data, also for companies close to the federal government. Swisscom and SBB, for example, already publish parts of their data as OGD.
From today’s perspective, the drafting of a specific OGD law is not mandatory for the Federal Council for the further development of OGD and is therefore not included as a measure in the OGD strategy 2019 – 2022. Rather, the corresponding special laws should be adapted where necessary.