Public management, agility and innovation: The Swiss experience with the COVID-19 loan scheme

Abstract

Within only 10 days of March 2020, the Swiss administration had designed and implemented a loan guarantee scheme for enterprises. The implementation phase was also short: it lasted less than five months. This article examines how that was possible, considering the complexity of the institutional setting and the scheme's innovative form, especially in terms of IT, including breakthroughs for the Swiss e-administrative practice: the scheme used algorithms to verify clients’ applications, a unique identification number for companies was implemented on a large scale, Swiss banks were integrated into the project's preparation and implementation, and some of their client operations were centralised on a government e-platform. The salient features of the process are identified through an analysis of the unfolding of operations during those ten days. The circumstances and context leading to radically new forms of public governance are also identified. Besides, an output analysis was undertaken to single out the innovative features of the deliverable. The case under consideration was short, and came unpredictably, so that no data or observations could be collected before or during the case. Accordingly, the study is by and large based on ex-post enquiries. With no explicitly formalised mandates, structures, or roles, the project participants came up with an informal organisation system. A well-defined deliverable was a powerful driver of the process. Several characteristics of the project, such as efficient networks, real-time information flow, flexible roles, flat hierarchy, and swift iterative subprocesses were akin to those of ‘agile organisations’. Tasks were performed concomitantly instead of sequentially. Points for practitioners It is striking that not much scholarly research has been published so far with a view to collecting and sharing the ‘lessons learned’ from the unique experience of emergency support packages during the pandemic, including at intra-organisational level. Research could be done regarding replicability both for future emergencies and for adjusting normal-times public management practices. This proposal aims to contribute to this conversation with a view to inspiring practitioners in public administrations and government entities. It foregrounds the relationship between governmental crisis management and the digitalisation of public administration processes using computer-enabled tools.