A Commitment to Open and Community-Driven Digital Standards
Since this summer, Liip has been a member of the eCH association, a Swiss standardisation organisation founded in 2001. eCH defines standards for e-government, ranging from data models and formats to interface descriptions and technical guidelines. Consequently, the association facilitates digital collaboration among public institutions and with business and individuals. Critical public digital services, such as e-voting, e-VAT and e-move are based on eCH standards. eCH also actively fosters the implementation and tailoring of international standards, such as for the publication of open government data, to ensure interoperability between Swiss digital systems and those abroad.
Standards development plays a key role in enabling interoperability, both from a technical and an organisational perspective. eCH standards are freely accessible and help avoid technological silos, improve data quality and foster harmonisation of administrative processes for the benefit of both the population and institutions. At its core, interoperability is about improving collaboration and creating more seamless digital services for everyone involved.
Open Source for a Sustainable Digital Future
At Liip, we firmly believe that open standards, just like open source software, form an essential foundation for a sustainable and inclusive digital transformation.
In addition, we chose to join eCH because it is a community-driven association that focuses on the real needs expressed by its members. Members identify and prioritise new standardisation themes and organise themselves in new specialist groups as needed. Members develop and maintain standards. And members demonstrate the use of standards and promote their voluntary application. This approach is fully aligned with Liip’s agile method of product and service development, which always puts the needs of the end users first. These include citizens, businesses, and public servants.
"As an active member of the open source ecosystem, our involvement in eCH reflects our commitment to building the digital infrastructure of tomorrow in a responsible and participatory way."
— Charlotte van Ooijen Falce, Data Strategist and eCH Coordinator at Liip
We join a community of over 200 collective and 60 individual members, consisting of confederate, cantonal, city and municipal administrations as well as research institutes and civil society organisations.
"Liip is a key player in e-government services and is known for its open and community-driven approach. This philosophy aligns closely with that of eCH. We are pleased to welcome Liip as a member and look forward to working together."
— Denis Morel, Alliance Manager, eCH
Contributing to the Community
We have already joined two of the over 20 eCH’s specialist groups: Open Government Data and Political Affairs. These are both areas that closely reflect our values of transparency, data reusability, and digital sovereignty.
Open Government Data (OGD)
Building on their extensive work on pioneering Swiss open data projects like opendata.swiss and opentransportdata.swiss, Rae Knowler, senior software developer, represents Liip in this group. The group promotes the use of open government data in Switzerland with the aim to reduce transaction costs between data producers, intermediaries, and data users. It also standardises how data quality, update frequency, and publication timelines are declared to help data users manage quality more efficiently. The core work of the group revolves around the Swiss adaptation of DCAT-AP, the European metadata standard used to describe public sector datasets in a consistent and machine-readable format. The DCAT-AP-CH standard supports the publication of open government data from public institutions across Switzerland on the national portal, opendata.swiss, and in turn on the European data portal, data.europa.eu.
Political Affairs
This youngest specialist group of eCH, initiated in July 2025, focuses on developing a technical standard that enables parliaments at all federal levels to publish their already public data on affairs like petitions, decrees, laws and consultations in a technically consistent and comprehensive format. Contrary to the OGD group, this group is starting its work from scratch, allowing Liip data scientist and metadata expert Nataliia Kovalchuk to help shape a completely new standard in an area with a big potential impact on Swiss democracy.
Looking Ahead
Joining eCH is not just a formal membership. It is a commitment to helping shape the future of digital public services in Switzerland. We are proud to contribute to this mission by sharing our expertise and collaborating with like-minded organisations that believe in openness, transparency, and real impact. We are already in contact with several other eCH specialist groups to explore where we can bring the most value and are eager to contribute to better e-government standards for Switzerland.