New digi­tal stra­tegy laun­ched by the Fede­ral Council

On April 20, 2016, the Fede­ral Coun­cil adopted the new “Digi­tal Switz­er­land” stra­tegy (Link). It replaces the pre­vious stra­tegy for an infor­ma­ti­on socie­ty in Switz­er­land from 2012, which only applied to the fede­ral govern­ment. With the new stra­tegy, the Fede­ral Coun­cil aims to

[…] con­tri­bu­te to our coun­try bene­fiting more from incre­a­sing digi­tizati­on and deve­lo­ping even more dyna­mical­ly as an inno­va­ti­ve eco­no­my. The eco­no­my should be able to deve­lop as free­ly as pos­si­ble in the digi­tal space. With a view to an infor­med and demo­cra­tic socie­ty and to safe­guar­ding wel­fa­re, it is also of cen­tral importance that the inha­bi­tants of Switz­er­land are able to use modern infor­ma­ti­on and com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on tech­no­lo­gies com­pe­tent­ly and secu­re­ly in their dai­ly lives.

First and fore­most, the Fede­ral Coun­cil would like to coor­di­na­te alre­a­dy exi­sting acti­vi­ties and expert groups. In addition

• the Fede­ral Depart­ment of Eco­no­mic Affairs, Edu­ca­ti­on and Rese­arch (EAER) cla­ri­fi­es the frame­work con­di­ti­ons that are neces­sa­ry for the Swiss eco­no­my to take advan­ta­ge of the oppor­tu­ni­ties offe­red by digi­tizati­on, par­ti­cu­lar­ly in the are­as of com­pe­ti­ti­on law, regu­la­ti­on and the labor market;
• DETEC is deve­lo­ping an over­view of access, hand­ling and secu­ri­ty of data in the Confederation;
• the fede­ral admi­ni­stra­ti­on is the­r­e­fo­re see­king coor­di­na­ted exch­an­ge with the EU in this area.