Swiss digital summit – Promising New Momentum

Bürgenstock, sweeping views, pleasant ambience, distance from everyday life: Switzerland’s 7th Digital Summit on 19 and 20 May brought together the promoters of digital transformation in business, universities and the state. With electronic identity (eID), artificial intelligence (AI) and digital sovereignty, three key topics for Switzerland’s digital future took centre stage.

eID

25 years after the first ideas and 15 years after the first half-hearted attempt with SuisseID, Switzerland will finally have an eID next year. The souvereign’s approval still pending though. On September 28^th 2025, the people will vote on the eID Act (BGEID). And it is anything but clear how the vote will turn out. The previous law was rejected by a clear majority in 2021. This time the situation is different, but the substantial improvements in the procedure and content of the law are offset by new social distortions that are also fuelling fears. What is often neglected in the discussion is the big picture, which looks at the digital wallet instead of just the eID, and its role as a digital infrastructure for administration and business. This makes it all the more important to discuss this topic in depth.

AI

Artificial intelligence is increasingly dominating the digitalisation discourse – in Switzerland as everywhere else. It has long been a natural part of the economy – with applications in areas where one would not expect it, such as agriculture. But in recent years in particular, thanks to spectacular advances in generative AI, it has substantially changed many professional tasks. This is increasingly accompanied by a reduction in the workforce. In addition, the hype has also led to many failed projects. It is thus only natural that the belief in miracles, practical frustrations and dystopian fears mix to form a strange mixture. Even supposed insiders are talking nonsense. And some of the current ideas for practical use are threatening – for example, the emergence of a governance apparatus that will bring a lot of bureaucracy but probably little protection from harm. It is therefore important to take stock: Where does the world stand? Where does Switzerland stand?

Digital sovereignty

The world order is disintegrating. The USA wants to reshape globalisation according to its interests and impose the rule of the strongest. Their means of enforcement is chaotic arbitrariness. Switzerland is threatened with being cut off from chip technology in the very short term or from Asian students and researchers, who are an important resource for current research in Switzerland. Many things are now conceivable that until recently seemed absurd. This is why digital sovereignty has become a key issue. Somehow, it has always been “actually important”. But in practice, it was an orchid subject at universities (and primarily the related topic of digital self-determination was popular in the federal administration). Digital self-determination is now on its way to becoming a political cause célèbre. This makes it all the more important to involve the business community in the discourse.

Values and trust

Many of the presentations and contributions to the discussion at Bürgenstock were focused on values and trust. All three topics are indeed closely linked to values and trust. How we judge the quality of eID depends heavily on what is important to us and what we are afraid of. How we feel about the use of AI depends to a large extent on whether we trust non-transparent technical solutions. In addition, our ideas about what should be done with AI and where research into it should go vary greatly. Various digital pioneers want to use AI for automation, surveillance and emotional manipulation, while some economists argue that AI for human empowerment would bring greater economic benefits (and would be more compatible with social freedom and justice). And digital self-determination and digital sovereignty are of course also questions of values. At the Digital Summit, much of the discussion revolved around how Swiss values can be cultivated and valorised in the digital world and how greater public trust in digital technologies can be gained.

Summit experiences

The Digital Summit was successful in several respects. It enabled networking and the exchange of perspectives (which everyone expects). It distributed important knowledge about everything that is currently going on (although a lot of the information was new even for the insiders). It exposed the great diversity of perspectives (often 80% of digitalisation is only about banal efficiency gains; for some projects such as rapid scaling, Swiss moral principles have to be thrown overboard; where ethicists see poverty, practitioners see dictatorships; etc.). It raised awareness of the urgency of a commitment to more digital transformation (especially in infrastructure policy). And it conveyed confidence: Switzerland has fundamentally changed many behaviours, as has Digitalswitzerland, and things are moving forward again.

Specifically on the three topics

In the area of eID, the approach and key aspects of the solution were presented. The focus is now on broad internal administrative expertise and open participation. The core of the solution is that verifiable digital certificates are issued, which are then completely under the control of the user. The user decides to whom they are shown; the issuing institutions are not informed when they are shown. A detailed analysis of this will be published on Societybyte in the summer.

Internationally, there is an attempt to create global standards for the secure use of verifiable digital certificates, with Switzerland acting as a midwife. An article on this will be published on Societybyte on June 30^th.

In the field of AI, national LLMs (Large Language Models) are being developed that take Swiss values (including no data theft!) into account, are multilingual and are harmonised with Swiss terminology and concepts. An article on this will be published on Societybyte on June 23^rd.

In addition to OFCOM, the Federal Chancellery is also committed to digital sovereignty. Swiss data rooms are a key sub-topic here. They not only serve to facilitate the digitalisation of the economy (because they increase data availability), but also strengthen independence from foreign countries. There will be two civil society events on this topic at the end of the summer: on August 26^th, the eJustice.ch association will be holding its IT and Law conference at Bern City Hall, which this year is dedicated entirely to the topic of data spaces. And on September 2^nd, the Swiss Data Space Forum of the Swiss Data Alliance will take place in Rotkreuz.