EasyGov put to the test
Two years ago, our agency was commissioned by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) to develop the name and web design of a new online switchboard designed to digitise and simplify exchanges between businesses and the authorities. During the Corona crisis, around 100,000 Swiss SMEs experienced the quality of the EasyGov portal in one fell swoop.
From the start, the Online Desk was designed to be as user-friendly as possible – after all, the name says it all: “EasyGov”. But our clients at SECO, Martin Godel, Markus Pfister and Philippe Zimmermann, seemed to want to push usability to the limit. Today we know that they were right.
The launch of the portal met with mostly positive reactions from the media. “Der Bund” wrote: “Behördenstress adé – easygov.swiss goes online” and the SRF “Tagesschau” saw “EasyGov” as a means “against the bureaucratic monster”. Only the NZZ was not quite ready to trust it: “It may be late, but at least the federal government is sending a signal to companies with this portal. They can hope – thanks to the Internet – for a reduction in bureaucracy”.
Over the past two years, more than 25,000 companies have registered on easygov.swiss, but it was only in March this year that EasyGov was able to really show what the platform is capable of: around 100,000 companies applied for liquidity assistance through EasyGov during the Corona crisis. They experienced how easy it is to manage public administration digitally – and how easy it is to misuse it. The NZZ was also impressed, writing on 16 April: “Ideally, the amount is credited to them (the SMEs) half an hour after they have sent the application to their house bank”. And yet, the NZZ went on, it was not easy to fool the state, explaining the security features built into the application process. In addition, the accountancy firm PwC had been commissioned to check the applications. After checking 30% of the 98,573 applications, not a single duplicate could be found, according to SECO. The NZZ concluded: “The various precautions taken by the authorities should put a stop to abusive applications”. Martin Godel, head of SME policy at SECO, commented dryly on the NZZ article entitled “Corona loans for SMEs: How the Confederation deters fraudsters” on LinkedIn: “…even what is designed to be unbureaucratic does not open the door to abuse”. The online counter “EasyGov” lives up to its name.