Digitization Monitor 2023
The Digitization Monitor 2023 records and visualizes the digital policy profiles of the candidates before the federal elections with the aim of giving more attention to issues of digital policy and digital transformation.
Factsheet
- Lead school Business School
- Institute(s) Institute for Public Sector Transformation
- Research unit(s) Digital Democracy
- Funding organisation Others
- Duration (planned) 01.11.2022 - 31.12.2023
- Project management Prof. Dr. Matthias Stürmer
- Head of project Dr. Daniel Schwarz Badertscher
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Project staff
Jan Fivaz
Kristelle Plüss -
Partner
digitalswitzerland
Die Schweizerische Post AG
asut Schweizerischer Verband der Telekommunikation
Digitale Gesellschaft
Pour Demain
Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften
swissICT
Universität Genf
Universität Zürich - Keywords Digital policy, Digital society, Elections, Digital profile
Situation
Although dealing with digital transformation is a central issue in politics, it plays only a marginal role in the election campaign. Voters therefore lack the basis for an informed election decision: How do the candidates position themselves on important digital policy issues? What form should the digital transformation take and what political measures should be taken to achieve it?
Course of action
The core element of the project is the questionnaire. In a first step, a participatory process of collecting questions will take place until the end of February 2023, in which the entire interested community can participate online. Based on this and with the expertise of the involved academic partners and "smartvote", the definitive questionnaire will then be developed. The survey of the candidates will take place in cooperation with "smartvote" from mid-June. From August, the digital profiles of the candidates will be available to the general public on a public web app. At the same time, data analyses will be made available to the media.
Result
While the project implementation (both in terms of the cooperation between the project sponsor organisations and the technical implementation of the survey and the online comparison tool) was very successful, the participation of candidates fell short of what was possible: 21% of candidates completed the 2023 Digital Monitor questionnaire, which is almost exactly the same participation rate as in 2019. By comparison, 85% of candidates completed the much longer questionnaire of the voting advice app "smartvote". This suggests that digitisation issues are still not given the importance they deserve for the current and future development of our society. Nevertheless, a change towards a more positive assessment of the digital transformation and the necessary prerequisites can be observed in the project's results. Obviously, the experience gained during the coronavirus pandemic has played its part. Specifically, the positive development can be seen in the fact that, compared to 2019, a much more positive assessment prevails both in the general assessment of the opportunities of digitisation and in the expansion of the mobile network with the latest (5G) technology - especially in those parties that were the most skeptical in 2019.
Looking ahead
It remains uncertain whether the challenges of digitisation will be adequately addressed by the parties and media before the next elections in 2027. From today's perspective, it is therefore foreseeable that a tool for transparency and opinion-forming in this area will also be necessary in the next elections, .
