Florin Hasler, director of Opendata.ch, presented the Swiss perspective. Since 2012, the non-profit has been committed to making data useable for the common good. Its members include both public institutions and private enterprises.
A national open data portal has existed in Switzerland since 2013 and the federal government’s first open government strategy was approved in 2014. In addition, the county now has a master plan for open government data.
The next major step is “open by default,” a legally mandated paradigm shift that will come into force for institutions at the national level in 2027. This will make open data the norm in Switzerland. As Hasler noted, however, “the law alone will not be enough.”
Local data stewards at the federal and cantonal level are working on organizing and publishing the data. Regions such as St. Gallen and Zurich are leading the field, while other cantons still have some catching up to do. There are three metadata platforms at the federal level: opendata.swiss, I14Y und LINDAS and visualize.admin.ch. The plan is to merge them in the future.
Presentation by Florin Hasler