Short abstract:

The digitization of policies can make actors in a sector vulnerable to the point where the Sovereignty of the State is threatened. We examine how alternatives may preserve the State’s competencies without jeopardising its sovereignty.

Long abstract:

Swiss agriculture is a strongly regulated sector. Policy definition and implementation comes within the realm of the Confederation and of the Cantons who subsidiarily share Sovereignty according to the Swiss Federal Constitution. Federal and local administrations set up programs and measures in order to achieve constitutional and legal policy objectives. They monitor farmers' compliance by using a collection of digital information systems whose data is supplied by farmers. Personal data, data on land and crops, on animals, on programs farmers have signed on to, on quantity, quality, and controls, on modes and means of production, etc. are stored in public IT infrastructures and linked to a unique identifier for each farmer, providing a fingerprint associated to every action of every farmer.

This data trove generated envy. In 2015 a private initiative claimed the right to collect and to manage this data “already paid for by the People” in the name of an alleged need to simplify farmers’ administrative work. It proposed to centralise all farm data in a single database, that other actors (public or private) could access via APIs. A group of farmers' associations opposed the move and launched a counter-project.

In this paper, we examine how the digitization of agricultural policy made the actors in the sector vulnerable to the point where the Sovereignty of the States was threatened. We discuss how digital alternatives, anchored in the Constitution and in the Law, may preserve the States’ competencies without jeopardising their sovereignty.