Promoting innovations

Innovation competition for 2025

The Digital Public Services Switzerland is providing a total of CHF 200,000 in annual funding for innovative projects. An independent jury – consisting of representatives from the three federal levels – selects the projects and distributes the funding.

Projects have been submitted and the jury meets in february 2025. The chosen projets of 2025 will soon be presented here.

Maturity certificate as digital proof

When enrolling, universities, federal institutes of technology or universities of applied sciences have to check the Matura certificates of prospective students by inspecting the original diplomas. This method proved to be costly and inefficient. The introduction of the beta infrastructure for the e-ID provides an opportunity to gain initial experience with digital verification in the education system as well. This could simplify the verification process and automate it to a large extent. The project therefore aims to develop a proof of concept (PoC) for the digital issuing and automatic verification of maturity certificates based on the public beta version of the e-ID infrastructure. To this end, a school at the upper secondary level of a canton in French-speaking Switzerland is to be equipped with the infrastructure to issue digital maturity certificates. The students will receive their baccalaureate certificates directly in their wallet. The digital baccalaureate certificates can then be automatically validated by a university (EPFL). The project also aims to gain initial experience with digital certificates in the Swiss education system, to generate valuable insights into their practical implementation and to lay the foundation for the standardisation of digital certificates.

Organisation: Educa

Support from Digital Public Services Switzerland: CHF 50,000

Ensure and strengthen data security in the collaborative work areas of the administrations

Public administrations in Switzerland use collaborative tools to successfully carry out their projects and support their operational activities. Such wiki-like tools facilitate and accelerate everyday tasks. But despite training and raising awareness among users, personal, sensitive and/or confidential data (log-in data, passwords, keys, certificates, etc.) may appear in these areas. The canton of Vaud has confirmed the need to monitor these areas and to provide a tool to analyse their content in search of this sensitive information as part of a proof of concept. The aim of the project is therefore to develop a tool that can automatically identify sensitive or security-related data in wiki documentation or project management tools using a non-public AI. This tool should also be able to generate a detailed analysis report that includes advice on how to resolve the identified risks. The application should be user-friendly and easy for any employee to use, even without advanced computer skills.

Organisation: Canton of Vaud, Direction générale du numérique et des systèmes d'information

Support from Digital Public Services Switzerland: CHF 45,000

GPT for communities

Modern language models such as ChatGPT or Claude offer enormous potential, but municipalities face the challenge of complying with data protection requirements while promoting the exchange of knowledge about the opportunities and risks of these technologies. The solution developed in the project, GPT for communities, combines a generative open-source AI model with a local knowledge database. In contrast to purely generative solutions, the so-called retrieval-augmented generation system only accesses verified internal knowledge. It enables the use of a flexible, local prompt library that works with templates to deliver stylistically appropriate and coherent answers. The solution is designed to enable knowledge to be shared across departments. It ensures that all employees, regardless of their level of expertise, can access relevant know-how through targeted and clearly formulated answers to their specific questions. Employees of the administration should be involved in expanding the prompt library and optimising workflows. Thanks to a modular architecture, the solution should be flexibly adaptable to the individual needs of different municipalities or organisations at a later date.

Organisation: Municipality of Orpund

Support from Digital Public Services Switzerland: CHF 40,000

Sustainable community management for open-source solutions

Open-source software solutions in the public sector require long-term strategies to ensure their further development and maintenance. Effective community management approaches play a crucial role in strengthening motivation, knowledge sharing and collaboration. Against this background, this project will examine the following question: Which community management strategies contribute to the successful long-term maintenance and sustainable further development of open-source software solutions in the public sector? The potential of cooperation between municipalities, cities, cantons and the business sector in the use of open source software is to be determined and incorporated into a concept for community management.

Organisation: Canton of Schwyz

Support from Digital Public Services Switzerland: CHF 20,000