E-government in Europe: On the Backwardness of the Swiss Government

In late 2019, the European Commission published a report comparing the integration of digital into the governments and administrations of some thirty European countries, and the way that integration has improved the service to users (or failed to do so). Isabela Pardal has examined this ‘benchmark’ with particular reference to the case of Switzerland, which she knows well. As she stresses here, in light of the relatively poor position of that country, technical and financial resources are not sufficient in themselves to guarantee organizational performance, since Switzerland, whose e-government development strategy was launched more than 20 years ago and which has all the necessary resources to fund it, lags behind in Europe in this regard. She highlights a lack of cooperation and synergy at the various different institutional levels, attributable in large part, as she sees it, to paying insufficient regard to the intangible components of the system. For its part, France performs well in terms of e-government, though it could also make great improvements if, as Isabela Pardal recommends for the Swiss Federation, it acted to strengthen synergies at all institutional levels.