Review: Good lawmaking – information gathering and digitization of the legislative process

On August 20, the Center for Lawmaking (ZfR), the Competence Center for Public Management (KPM), and the Center for Democracy Aarau (ZDA) held a conference on information gathering and digitization of the legislative process at the Federal Palace. After a welcome and introduction by National Council President Maja Riniker, over 100 participants from the fields of practice and academia discussed current developments and challenges in lawmaking.

It became clear that the digitization of the legislative process can bring about numerous optimizations – in particular technical simplifications, but also improved handling of complex processes and materials. This goes hand in hand with a potential acceleration of the legislative process, which can ultimately also contribute to strengthening democracy.

On the other hand, there are also various risks associated with the digitized legislative process – in particular, data security and the risk of misinformation and manipulation, as well as the associated loss of trust in institutions. There is therefore still work to be done in practice and in academia.

The presentations from the conference can be found here: https://www.zfr.uzh.ch/de/weiterbildung/tagungen/250820.html