What a contrast between the private sector and the state: big banks still have a large number of their staff in the home office. Meanwhile, the government has failed to provide civil servants with the technical tools for work from home.
A new study by consulting company Deloitte is highlighting a problem that is likely to grab the attention of many in the Swiss capital of Bern: only a third of all civil servants working for the federal government have been able to work from home without any problems.
The government's order to work from home during the pandemic seems to have missed the mark close to where it originated – the federal administration. In the regional civil service (27 percent) and in the communes (15 percent) the numbers were even worse, according to a statement by Deloitte issued on Friday.
Expensive IT-Failures
Inevitably, the survey will remind observers of a number of cumbersome IT-projects in the civil service. The most famous maybe was Insieme, a project that was designed to replace the federal tax authorities' IT systems with one single system. After years of technical and financial complications, the government had to pull the plug and outlays worth more than 100 million Swiss francs ($109.5 million) had to be written off.
While the civil service struggled with home office, Swiss office-based industries in the private sector fared significantly better. The information and communications industry (65 percent) and finance and insurance industry (50 percent) did particularly well in the survey by Deloitte.
Top Marks for Banks
Swiss banks earned top marks for their handling of the pandemic and the order to stay at home whenever possible. Credit Suisse (CS) in July reported that four out of five of its bankers still were performing their duties from home – a hugely impressive 80 percent.
The big banks seemed to have prepared their businesses to an extent that they were able to maintain operations relatively smoothly while shifting people to other locations than their ordinary offices. Early indications from Switzerland's biggest bank UBS suggests that after the pandemic, up to a third of its staff will work from another location than the official office at any one time – with that third always made up by different people.
It is the technological basics that seem to have lacked at government level, the study shows, which is based on a survey of 1,500 people. Almost three quarters of all civil servants had to wait for days or even weeks to receive the necessary equipment – or never actually got any, Deloitte said. The state didn't provide the tools and the necessary training to its staff, the survey confirms.
A Good Moment for a Digital Push
The corona-crisis seems to have provided the government with an incentive to make a step forward in making the administration more digital. First though it will have to adjust the regulatory framework (for instance with the introduction of the electronic signature) and buy the necessary equipment for its staff. At the same time, it will have to safeguard the protection of the sensitive data available at the administration.
The majority of civil servants (56 percent) would be in favor of a work environment that relied more strongly on digital means. «The corona-crisis has shown that it is possible to implement changes very swiftly,» said Rolf Bruegger, director for government & public services at Deloitte Switzerland.
«Now is the time to seize the momentum and invest sustainably in digitization,» the expert said.
