FSO breakdown should convince cantons of uniform data
Published: Saturday, Jan 6th 2024, 01:50
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In retrospect, the Director of the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) has taken something positive from the mishap in the federal elections. He uses it as an argument for the cantons to harmonize their data, as FSO Director Georges-Simon Ulrich said in an interview.
The FSO's goal is for all cantons to use standardized formats for elections by 2027, Ulrich said in an interview with the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" (NZZ) published on Saturday. The FSO is thus following the recommendations of an administrative investigation carried out by the Federal Department of Home Affairs following the mishap.
"I have to coordinate, but I can't force anyone to do anything," Ulrich told the NZZ. The cantons would rightly ask themselves what added value new processes would bring them. However, the federal government is increasingly realizing that it first needs harmonized data in order to largely benefit from digitalization. The FSO Director said that common standards would enable Switzerland to make faster progress with digitization.
False party strengths
Today, the cantons are not bound by specific data standards. For the elections on October 22, the 26 cantons used no fewer than 13 different data standards. The FSO had to develop a separate import or import script for each one.
Due to a programming error, votes were counted multiple times and party strengths were calculated incorrectly, as the investigation showed. "The error had no effect on the distribution of seats in parliament," emphasized Ulrich in a recent interview.
The results on election day are always only provisional. Around two to three percent of the preliminary statistics published contain errors. The error culture at the FSO has always been good, said Ulrich. What is new is that the population has a better understanding of the complex handling of data.
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