Regierungsrat Pierre Alain Schnegg: Eröffnungsrede zum Swiss Telecommunication Summit 2023

Mr. President, members of the Board of Directors, distinguished members, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your invitation. Can you still remember the Minitel from France or the Videotex in Switzerland? I expect that some of you still remember when exactly 40 years ago, the former PTT operations started their offer of pixelated small screens for households. That was the dawn of the communication society in Switzerland. 600 companies provided information and first interactive offers. For example, you could close insurance contracts, even buy some articles and cars online. There was an online flea market, some travel agencies were active, and various cantons, cities, and municipalities made first attempts at online citizen dialogue. And on the online bike, people met for chess. The device had to be rented for twelve francs per month. One hour of data exchange cost seven francs. For a short time, around 100,000 devices were in operation, but then the numbers rapidly declined. Fifteen years later, the service was discontinued. They had been ahead of their time. The transmission of text and graphics was revolutionized by HTML. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Geneva proposed a networked information management system and called his idea the World Wide Web. At the same time, the 12 communication model municipalities in Switzerland started a major project to research the communication needs of the future. Over five years, first concrete projects were realized that share many commonalities with today's challenges of digitalization. As early as 1990, online municipal votes were conducted in the Zurich municipality of Mauer. Thirty-three years later, on June 18, 2023, the first people were able to vote online in a federal vote. Switzerland was one of the leading countries at the beginning of digitalization. Then came a longer pause because legislative processes take and continue to take a long time. Federalism demands broad participation. I'm thinking especially of the years-long discussions about data security and data protection, about procurement law, and the duty to use tax money carefully. The principle of legality ensures that state action is clearly defined. Everything that is not legally permitted is forbidden. But renewal processes cannot be initiated with prohibitions. The tempo of democratic processes does not keep pace with the tempo of developments in digitalization. This divergence should be addressed immediately. So how do we keep pace with the dynamics of digitalization? In B2B business, it's easier, and therefore Switzerland, thanks to its innovative and inventive spirit, has kept pace with international developments. Switzerland offers very good solutions. Unfortunately, they are often island solutions, and networking is lacking. I experienced this development up close. After my commercial apprenticeship, I pursued further education and obtained my diploma in business informatics in 1985. With the diploma in hand, I became head of the microinformatics department at the company Eberle SA, and two years later I co-founded a software company with a friend, which I led until 2014. And since 2016, I have been a member of the Cantonal Government of Bern. You see, ladies and gentlemen, I am not only a user of information and communication technologies, but I also programmed and sold my own software. That's why it's so important to me that we advance digitalization in the administration and properly position ourselves as a canton.

Ladies and gentlemen, resilience — a word that a few years ago was used almost exclusively in medicine and psychology. That fits my current role as Health Director. In medicine, this term is used for the compressibility or elasticity of tissue, and in psychology for the ability to withstand negative influencing factors without developing a mental disorder. In recent years, the term has also been used in business and even for entire countries. The concept of resilience has been expanded and is increasingly synonymous with adaptability, resilience, and goal-oriented pragmatism as a survival pattern. The Corona pandemic showed how quickly and pragmatically the state, the cantons, municipalities, and the population can act. In a crisis situation, people stand together and things become possible that normally take several months or even years. In the Canton of Bern, we developed our own vaccination software within a few weeks, built software for contact tracing and monitoring in record time. The federal government rapidly produced the certificate application. The economy and administration immediately created possibilities for working from home. Logistics adapted at all levels very quickly to the new circumstances — in other words, responded very resiliently. For example, transport logistics for vaccine distribution across the entire canton — without digitalization, this would not have been possible at this pace and quality. Corona clearly showed that we are capable of tackling future challenges, even very quickly and professionally.

Ladies and gentlemen, whoever wants to network must be networked. In recent years, we have made great progress. The Corona crisis made us aware of how important cooperation is. At the same time, we discovered gaps in the system that we must close as quickly as possible so that we can access current data for our decisions. Throughout the overall system, we still often lack current figures. In healthcare and social services, we often make decisions based on data material that is more than two years or even older. We have no real-time data. That must change quickly. For years, the Canton of Bern has been promoting and supporting greater use of synergies and better cooperation between actors in healthcare, in care and nursing. They are working toward ensuring patients can be cared for near their place of residence and continuously. This avoids unnecessary waiting times, treatment interruptions, multiple examinations, and misdiagnoses. My goal is to convince all service providers to work together as well as possible and share information — whether hospitals, therapists, Spitex, or care homes. Together it works better. I am convinced of this, and we have proven it in recent years.

Digital transformation is not just about technology. We must bring people along. Besides technology, we must commit to clear and convincing communication and focus on carefully managing the associated change processes. We have been in this transformation process for about 40 years now. I am always impressed that we reinvent the wheel even though there are enough examples of how a digital state could function. Estonia is often cited as an example. I also received some interesting feedback from a Ukrainian politician who temporarily visited Bern. He was surprised by how slow Swiss internet is and how few applications are available for citizens to interact with the administration. This observation is not wrong, but since we are talking about resilience, I want to highlight that the Canton of Bern has significantly sharpened its ICT Strategy 2021-2025. The vision behind this strategy is: digital administration is self-evident. We want transparent, economical, and media-break-free electronic government services for the economy, population, and administration. In the preparation phase of strategy development, all approximately 300 digitalization projects of the canton were cataloged. In the current strategy and implementation phase, we focus our energy on 30 priority projects that provide the greatest benefit for the population and the administration. Some projects are already implemented and available online.

If we want to make the administration more efficient, and offer our services faster, more cost-effectively, and better, then we must follow the principle of digital first. Non-digital channels should only continue in parallel when use of the digital channel is not acceptable for the end user. The healthcare system is much more advanced than cantonal boundaries. The private sector recognized this long ago. Today there are thousands of applications and online offers providing added value to the population. For example, telemedicine offerings. Digitalization can help ensure basic medical care. Telemedicine offerings can contribute to ensuring rapid initial care in the future, because the shortage of doctors is especially high in rural areas. In Switzerland, over 97 percent of the population has a smartphone, and 96 percent of households have internet access. These are top international figures. This creates many new possibilities for healthcare. For example, one wouldn't need to go to the doctor for minor cases if a video consultation would suffice. Some such offerings already exist, including in psychiatry. The problem with the broad introduction of these solutions is still the legal framework, which often brings too high a regulatory burden. This prevents rapid adoption of new offerings. This is another aspect we must improve, because this market is in constant growth. Providers and other service companies have recognized the need.

Another persistent topic is the electronic patient dossier. For ten years we have been talking about it. The cantons are ready, the hospitals and care homes have joined a shared community. Now it's about convincing the population of its benefits. The FOPH is taking a new approach and starting a campaign in the autumn. A good example that regulation cannot be a good solution: we have no law for e-banking, but everyone uses it. Let's think about that in our next steps.

Ladies and gentlemen, digital transformation has captured all areas of life. Twenty years ago, an internet generation still lasted five years; now innovations occur annually. Computing power is growing ever greater, applications more complex. Artificial intelligence in healthcare has been successfully applied for several years. The continued development of surgical robots and precise measurement and analysis capabilities will make our lives easier — if we want it to. The human being will always be at the center. Technology and digitalization will support people in all life situations. In ten years, over a third of the population will be over 65. The population is aging, and care demands will increase strongly. We will be glad when some tasks can be automated and digitalized. We adapt to challenges and seek new ways. That is resilience. Thank you very much for your attention.

In my opinion, there is one main problem: the pace of digitalization versus the pace of our democracy. When you develop digitalization projects, if you do it like for other projects — for example, constructing a building — you have to define every last detail in advance. That means you spend four, five, six years working on definitions and catalogs, then go through the democratic process until the budget is approved. That means by the time you write the first line of code, you are already completely outdated. I believe this is a real problem — how to bring these two tempos together. This will certainly occupy us strongly in the future. Politics is always behind, and it's complicated. It wants to regulate; the industry would prefer less regulation. This is a topic I address at almost every event. That's why you asked me the question. It's an almost unsolvable problem to get parliaments and politicians to reduce regulations. Yes, that is certainly a Herculean task. But on the other hand, we have clearly shown it works differently. During the Corona crisis, Switzerland developed very good solutions in just a few weeks and months — what normally would have taken three, four, or more years. Think of the COVID certificates. Many may not have been entirely happy with them, but what was achieved by cantons and the federal government was remarkable. So actually, when we now see multiple crises, those are also multiple opportunities. Churchill said: 'Never let a good crisis go to waste.' Next question from the audience.

In my opinion, that is a great opportunity, especially for a canton like the Canton of Bern, which is very large in area and has many regions with fewer inhabitants. Connecting all of these people with a fast internet solution would take decades. 5G could be exactly the great opportunity for such regions. Perhaps we haven't yet succeeded in explaining it clearly enough to the affected people.

In the Canton of Bern, we have produced a report on the crisis and what was done, how, and so on. Based on that, we have defined certain recommendations, and we are now in the process of implementing those recommendations. But I believe we also need to remain pragmatic. The next crisis will not be the same crisis. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you.