Industry and government leaders met to discuss the needed balance between large-scale digitalization efforts and public trust globally and within Switzerland. Co-organized by IMD and digitalswitzerland, the Digital Competitiveness Forum 2024 was held on the IMD campus in Lausanne.
The discussions kicked off with a timely presentation of this year’s IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, where Switzerland finished a best-ever second out of 67 economies. Christos Cabolis, Chief Economist of IMD’s World Competitiveness Center, dug deep into details about Switzerland’s ranking, making it clear where the Alpine country could improve.
“Future readiness is a soft spot for the Swiss,” said Cabolis, pointing to the elements that weighed down the score. “It’s a very interesting update for Switzerland, and the most important issues we see are strengthening cybersecurity and being able to engage the citizens of the country.”
‘Digitalization is an opportunity to strengthen trust’
Public trust is an essential component of these measurements, which became the central topic for the rest of the event entitled Unlocking Trust in Governments’ Digital Infrastructure Programs.
Daniel Markwalder, Delegate for Digital Transformation and ICT steering at the Switzerland Federal Chancellery, delivered a keynote where he dealt with the topic of trust, particularly in relation to the upcoming launch of Switzerland’s state-recognized electronic credentials system (e-ID).
Digitalization might be increasing the trend where emotions are becoming more trusted than facts, but we have to make political discussions based on data, not emotions. To help this we think it is vital to have the facts at our disposal – and for that we need science,” said Markwalder, enforcing that Switzerland has a high level of faith in public institutions.
“I believe in two things: transparency and participation to counter these trends. Our goal is to use digital tools to strengthen trust. The e-ID is a concrete step in this direction. Digitalization is an opportunity to strengthen the trust.”
Learnings from an Eastern European counterpart
Another country that was discussed specifically was Estonia, 24th in the World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, which has famously embraced wide-ranging government digitization efforts. Sandra Särav, Deputy Secretary General for Economy and Innovation for the Estonian government, sent a video message, and made the point that “digitalization shouldn’t be the goal itself – it’s simply what you need to do to be efficient.”
It was a sentiment heartily supported by Markwalder, who joined a discussion panel with Öykü Işık, IMD Professor of Digital Strategy and Cybersecurity, Rainer Baumann (Group CIO & COO at Migros, Switzerland’s largest retail company), and Kalev Reiljan (Group CEO at Forus Eesti and IMD EMBA 2011) in discussion.
Reiljan, who is also Estonian, made the point that digital services were developed there in partnership between the public and private sectors. “It might be a good recommendation for Switzerland,” he said. “I think it’s also another way you can increase the trust.”
Baumann insisted that the Swiss government needed to embrace these coming changes. “We need to fundamentally rethink the internal processes and systems,” he said. “It’s not just putting a digital interface on things.”
