Key facts
In 2023, subsidies worth around CHF 47.6 billion were paid out by the Confederation. This represents 59% of the budget. Some of the subsidy-providing administrative units (AUs) use specialist IT applications for processing requests for subsidies. One such specialist application at the Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA) will need to be replaced by the end of March 2025.
The General Secretariat of the FDHA (GS-FDHA) recognised an opportunity to use this replacement exercise to acquire a system with general suitability for processing subsidy requests in the FDHA as well as the rest of the Federal Administration. The Federal Council therefore instructed the FDHA to present it, by the end of 2025, with a concept for rolling out the FDHA’s solution, known as “eSubsidies”.
The Swiss Federal Audit Office (SFAO) used the digital transformation auditing model to audit the eSubsidies project. The aim was to assess whether the FDHA’s solution is suitable for use across the Federal Administration.
If eSubsidies is implemented with the improvements suggested by the SFAO and with active stakeholder management, the Federal Administration will have a potentially efficient tool for processing virtually all subsidies and incoming subsidy requests. However, a few hurdles remain before this tool can be used across the Federal Administration: future users need to be convinced of the application’s added value, and funding needs to be secured.