We are building a digital platform that collects and analyzes the sustainability reports of Swiss companies and shows whether Swiss companies report on environmental and human rights issues, as required by the new non-financial reporting obligation.

With the introduction of mandatory non-financial reporting, Switzerland is following suit with the law that has already existed in the EU since 2014. However, there is a great lack of transparency in the area of sustainability reporting: it is unclear which companies are specifically subject to the law, there is no central registry of sustainability reports, and there is no official body that systematically analyzes sustainability reporting.

As a result, it takes a lot of time and effort to get an overview of which companies actually report on sustainability issues in accordance with the provisions on non-financial reporting. This lack of transparency also makes it very difficult for civil society to scrutinize sustainability reporting. businessresponsibility.ch closes this information gap and empowers civil society.

The digital platform identifies, collects, analyzes and publishes sustainability reports of hundreds of Swiss companies and makes data on non-financial reporting accessible.

Based on this data, businessresponsibility.ch enables the analysis of corporate reporting in Switzerland and thus allows civil society, authorities, legislators and last but not least the business community itself to get a fact-based and always up-to-date insight into the development and progress of non-financial reporting in Switzerland.

Team

• David Weiss
• Cahit Atilgan
• Dina Pomeranz
• Miguel Vazquez Vazquez
• Kobbina Awuah
• Deborah Kistler

Contact and website

• Email
• Website
• GitHub

Without voting rights, but not without opinion: About 35% of the Swiss population cannot participate in national democratic decisions. The Forum For Inclusion wants to give these people the opportunity to express themselves and thereby raise awareness for the issue: is it still acceptable who is allowed to participate in the political process and who is not?

It is also an experiment: can simple design adjustments enable respectful discussions on a digital platform? Online spheres are not necessarily known for respectful interaction. The Forum For Inclusion therefore does not use comment or like functions and does not follow a market logic that seeks to maximise interaction time.

Team

• Jeannie Schneider
• Vinzenz Leutenegger
• Flurin Hess
• Kadira Mujkanovic
• Paolo Rüegg

Contact and website

• Email
• Website
• GitHub
• Instagram
• Twitter

Citympact is a digital platform that aims to increase the low level of political participation at the municipal level of Generation Z in Switzerland. Doing so allows young people to give their opinion directly on concrete projects submitted by public authorities and sign or launch petitions to change things. The results are shared directly with the authorities in charge of these issues in the municipalities. In this way, public authorities benefit from a direct communication channel with the new generation of citizens and recreate engagement with communal policy issues.

Our team designed Citympact after noticing a gap between the desire of Swiss youth for political impact and their low use of the political tools at their disposal. Young people engage in political causes in novel ways on social media platforms. However, at the same time, turnout in Swiss municipal elections has dropped by more than 40% in the last 30 years. This is worrying because, as Switzerland consults its citizens more than any other country, a low turnout means that a small fraction of the population determines the outcome of a myriad of crucial issues for the country as a whole. This could even lead to the collapse of our democratic system.

In line with the UN’s 16th Sustainable Development Goal, which explicitly calls for “public access to information” and “representative decision-making”, we are convinced that Citympact will bridge this gap and boost political participation in Switzerland.

Team

• Johann Roduit
• Alexandre Luyet
• Orlanne Perey
• François Farquet

Contact and website

• Email
• Website
• GitHub

The public expectations in and the pressure on politics and public administration to build attractive, sustainable mobility solutions are high. Improving bicycle infrastructure to promote sustainable mobility for all age groups has become a political and urban planning priority across small and large municipalities.

The development of new bicycle paths is often slow and the population is rarely involved in their design. Data used by planners and the public administration to draft new bicycle paths is sparse. Notably, there is barely any information on how safe cyclists feel on existing cycle paths.

Municipalities are increasingly recognizing the benefits of involving the public in the needs assessment and planning process in infrastructure projects. There is also increasing pressure on administrations to report on the progress of the expansion of bike paths to the public.

VelObserver is a digital platform that allows residents to register their personal experiences of a municipality’s cycling infrastructure and thus make the bike-friendliness of a municipality apparent. VelObserver functions as an interface between cyclists and the public administration. We offer cyclists a tool to articulate their subjective perception regarding the quality of cycle paths and cycle routes. At the same time, we provide public administrators and politicians with an instrument to co-design future-proof sustainable mobility with the population.

Team

• Lea Strohm
• Roger Fischer
• Yvonne Ehrensberger
• Thomas Hug
• Res Marti
• Felix Schindler
• Peter Gassner

Contact and website

• Email
• Website
• Twitter
• GitHub

In the four years of a legislative period, the National Council and the Council of States deal with hundreds of parliamentary matters, in the course making thousands of individual decisions. This voting behaviour of the Swiss parliament – although publicly accessible in large parts – is difficult to understand and classify. So far, there is no public platform that makes this elementary part of parliamentary business open to citizens in a relevant and accessible form – leading to a lack of fact-based control over the elected representatives.

On the one hand, VoteLog offers civil society a low-threshold tool to evaluate the voting behaviour of parliamentarians in a standardised way. On the other hand, VoteLog enables the general public to understand these evaluations in any aggregated and visually processed form – and further to use them as an election assistance.

VoteLog is primarily aimed at citizens and those interested in politics, as well as non-profit associations, civil society groups, and non-government organisations. VoteLog is a freely accessible open-source web platform whose output will be available as open data to researchers, journalists, etc., allowing them to analyse, question and further contextualise the representative part of Swiss democracy for a prolonged time.

VoteLog thus strengthens political transparency and increases the accountability of democratically elected representatives.

Team

• Fernando Obieta
• Raphael Bosshard
• Simon Fischer
• Patricia Lenz
• Salim Brüggemann
• Christoph Laszlo
• Reto Schneider

Contact and website

• Email
• Website
• GitLab
• Prototype

Project CH+ addresses political self-education of young voters, in the context of digitalisation and increasingly easy access to entertainment media. In their free time, digital natives find themselves between “digital stress” and “digital bliss”. The always readily available world of entertainment and social media connects but also distracts. It offers us unlimited, highly appealing content that is in many ways more alluring than reading up about political candidates. Project CH+ uses the entertainment language to break through this “entertainment bubble”.

We believe that digital, interactive media can not only be used for entertainment, but that they are powerful tools for educational purposes. A democratic system needs educated, self-reflected people: old, young – now and in a digitalised future. As designers, creators of entertainment media and as IT developers, we have a responsibility to use our unique knowledge of technology and psychology to empower people in this digitalised future. 

With this conviction, we are creating a voting aid which uses game mechanics to make political self-education more inviting. Game concepts are implemented, to not only facilitate the decision making process during political elections, but to make it more exciting as well. You get to choose stuff! That’s pretty dope!

Our process to create applications that are useful and playfully engaging, is built on co-design. The concepts are created together with voters, political experts and game designers from all walks of life. The voting aid is developed on a cantonal level, from election to election – because a project for democracy needs a democratic approach.

Blog

Team Members

• Sophie Walker 
• Emma McMillin 
• Florian Meyer 
• Oliver Detig 
• Mela Kocher

Contact

Email:

Website

GitHub

Instagram

Twitter

Facebook 

Youtube

Media

SRF, 9.10.2020

owlly enables digital democracy by holistically promoting the electronic signing of referenda. With this, owlly complements the e-collecting puzzle with the missing process steps of signing a signature sheet, checking, certifying and counting signatures.

Cantons are accompanied step by step by owlly on the way to the introduction of e-collecting. There is more to e-collecting than just a technology. It must be understood as a socio-political endeavor. Because behind the introduction of e-collecting there are also social and political hurdles.

Parties and campaigners can easily integrate owlly on their campaign platform in order to enable citizens to carry out complete e-collecting.

Team

• Sandro Scalco
• Jonathan Dotzler
• Fabian Bolli
• Manuel Stamm
• David dal Busco

Contact

E-Mail: 

Webseite

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

GitHub

Blog

Many citizens don’t feel represented by politics anymore. In addition, insufficiently represented groups or people without voting rights are hardly given any opportunities to participate in politics. Tools like smartvote have already done a lot to improve transparency before elections. However, politics cannot always be captured in a yes/no grid or in ratings.

The smartask platform therefore offers citizens the opportunity to address their individual concerns, issues and ideas directly to parliamentarians. The platform thus promotes direct exchange between these two groups and makes an important contribution to a modern, inclusive democracy. With the Prototype Fund, a functional prototype could be developed. The goal is now to add missing features and to advance the launch of the platform step by step.

Team

• Michael Erne, Politools, Project Lead
• Carine Hunziker, Politools, Project Collaborator (Implementation/Content)
• Giorgio Nadig, Liip, Product Owner (technical development)
• Flavio Muff, Liip, Business Developer (technical development)

Contact

Email:

GitHub

Website

Democracy is one of Switzerland’s most valuable assets. But how can we excite our youth to engage with the democratic possibilities? voty.ch aims to improve the understanding of democracy for children aged 12-18 years with 3 modules:

Understanding Democracy: How does democracy actually work in Switzerland and why is it so precious? We develop an online toolbox to teach political education in classes (Sek-1, Gymnasium, Berufsschule) to motivate our youth to understand and discuss the building blocks of our political system using existing and newly created learning material.

Testing Democracy: Only adult citizens may cast a ballot. But young people have an opinion too! School classes can cast their vote on voty.ch on current national ballots an then discuss the results. We are interested in what the next generation thinks on current political topics.

Experiencing Democracy: Who decides at your school? Are students invited to propose initiatives and discuss them? We would like to experiment together, how we can bring democratical decision processes to schools in Switzerland (concept phase).

Blog

Team

• Stefan Niederhauser, Project Lead and Technology
• Roger Wiezel, Design & User Experience
• Urs Wildeisen, Educational Lead
• Barbara Reichen, Pedagogue and Artist

Contact and Website

• Email
• Website
• Twitter: @voty_ch
• GitHub