Facilitating access to public data: a must for Switzerland

The Federal Council of the Swiss Confederation has adopted the report “Permit system for open government data” for economic actors

At its meeting of 23 June 2021, the Federal Council of the Swiss Confederation adopted the report “Authorisation system for open government data”.
The text shows that the creation of an authorisation system for open government data is difficult to implement due to numerous conceptual, practical and financial obstacles.
In order to strengthen access to public data, the Federal Council rather points to the implementation of the Open Government Data (OGD) strategy 2019-2023.
The Federal Council’s report follows postulate 19.3342 submitted by National Councillor Jaqueline Badran on 22 March 2019, which instructs the Council to develop a simple authorisation system for access to open government data within the framework of the OGD strategy.
It calls for the definition of homogeneous criteria to categorise data supply and demand and to establish, for example, which data should be accessible without restriction and which should only be accessible on request, free of charge or for a fee, and for which purposes of use.

Zulassungssystem für Open Government Data
Système de régulation de l’accès aux données publiques
Sistema di autorizzazioni per gli open government data

Advantageous access conditions if there is public interest

The aim is to enable economic actors who use data for public interest purposes to benefit from advantageous access conditions.
In its report, the Federal Council comes to the conclusion that the development and introduction of criteria to identify different user groups and their needs or to predict the use of data for public purposes is not feasible.
Furthermore, the current infrastructure does not allow for the implementation of an authorisation system that meets the requirements.
A complete overhaul of numerous technical data management systems and processes would entail considerable costs, as would the review and development of the existing organisational and legal framework.
The report concludes that in order to maximise the social and economic usefulness of public data, they should be made available indiscriminately and free of charge in the form of OGD.
Making public data freely accessible improves transparency, participation and innovation in all sectors of our society.
Open government data are public sector data that the administration makes available for purposes of general interest.
They are published in freely accessible, free of charge and electronically readable formats, so that they can be reused for free and encourage the introduction of new business models.

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