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.

Introduction

Most research that is contributed resides in the computer science field and focuses on scrum and agile methodologies, however there is limited research that pays attention to the actual implementation challenges, innovative outcomes, or transformation of digital services in government.

Mergel (2016)

The above quote from Mergel (2016) was a call to pay more attention to the adoption of agility principles by government administrations. Her point was timely, and this article is an attempt to address that call.

The COVID-19 emergency was of such magnitude that all governments had to adjust their procedures and modi operandi in order to either be able to function under extremely short deadlines or conceptualise and design totally new types of measures. Besides, a high level of uncertainty about future epidemiological and economic developments surrounded decision-making and action by governments. While the health emergency was the priority for all governments, the economic emergency was also high on the political agenda. Governments designed support packages for their respective economies, with amounts that were hitherto unheard of.¹

This article considers one such measure, the ‘COVID-19 credit with joint and several guarantee’, in short ‘COVID credit’, introduced by Switzerland in the COVID-19 credit Ordinance of 25 March 2020 (hereinafter ‘the Ordinance’).² This measure was conceptualised in unchartered territory on two scores: policy process ‘Initiation, conceptualisation, and design process’ and regulatory content ‘Content of the COVID-19 Credit Ordinance and implementation modalities’. In terms of process, the measure was initiated, designed and implemented in a manner that had never been tested before. In terms of substance as well, it displays features that are new and creative. Among the innovative aspects of process and content examined in this article, particular focus lies on the use of digital tools, or e-administration.

This article aims to answer the following research questions:

1. What were the distinctive features of administration in designing and implementing the Swiss emergency loan scheme?

2. What were the novel and creative elements embodied in the output that were delivered, especially in terms of IT?

3. What key enablers and key factors of success can be singled out?

This should allow further questions to be addressed, such as whether there are lessons to be learned on a broader scale, respectively whether some elements are replicable in future crises.

The term ‘agile’ has made its way into the common language, often with unclear meaning and in unrelated contexts. However, in its original coinage, the term has a very precise definition. All in all, the ex-post analysis of the project's governance and organisation made in this paper reveals several commonalities with the concept of agility originally coined and defined by McKinsey.³ Concretely, all ‘trademarks’ of McKinsey's agile organisation and several ‘practices’ thereof can be detected in the project, as laid out in Table 1.

Table 1.

Trademarks and selected practices of agile organisations according to McKinsey.

	Trademarks	Organisational-agility practice (selected examples)
Strategy	North Star embodied across the project	Shared purpose and vision Sensing and seizing opportunities Flexible allocation of resources
Structure	Network of empowered teams	Clear flat structure Hands-on governance Robust communities of practice Active partnerships and ecosystem
People	Rapid decision and learning cycles	Rapid iteration Information transparency Continuous learning Action-oriented decision-making
Process	Dynamic people model that ignites passion	Cohesive community Entrepreneurial drive Role mobility
Technology	Next-generation enabling technology	Next-generation technology development and delivery practice

Source: see endnote 3.

As the issue of innovation was central to this episode, it is worth considering whether the theory of sequential ambidexterity developed by O’Reilly and Tushman (2013: 324–327) could match with the case at hand. In brief, organisational ambidexterity ‘consists of the ability to pursue simultaneously both incremental and discontinuous innovation’, i.e. both ‘improving what already exists’ (exploitation) and experimenting ‘completely new processes’ (exploration) (Carayannis, 2020: 1198).

An extensive list of references on the credit guarantee scheme, and some similar measures, during the COVID-19 pandemic is provided in Pauletto (2022). The author was not involved in the project.

Main milestones of the Swiss support scheme

On 11 March 2020, the WHO classified COVID-19 as a pandemic (Cucinotta and Vanelli, 2020), and on 13 March, the Federal Council issued a new ordinance (‘Ordinance 2’) providing for the ‘Schengen’ controls with entry restrictions.⁴ The Federal Councilor in charge of the Department of Finance (Finance Minister), Mr Ueli Maurer, requested his experts to prepare a measure (see the section ‘Initiation, conceptualisation and design process’). On 16 March, the Federal Council declared the state of ‘extraordinary situation’ (a form of state of emergency). At that point, experts had already started to work on Minister Maurer's instruction.

At its meeting on Friday 20 March, the Federal Council agreed on the main parameters of the facility (Federal Department of Finance, 2020). On Sunday 22 March, the draft ordinance on the COVID-19 credit was finalised at expert level, the Federal Council adopted it at an extraordinary session on 25 March, and the whole facility entered into force and was operational on 26 March (Media Center of the Confederation, 2020).

A detailed unfolding of events in Europe and Switzerland is summarised in Pauletto (2022). An event timeline is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Chronology of guarantee programs due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Source: SECO.

Initiation, conceptualisation and design process

Initiative and rationale

The initiator of the process leading to a state-guaranteed credit facility for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) was the Minister of Finance Ueli Maurer. At a press conference on 20 March, Mr Maurer promised that the scheme would be in place by the next week and that loan applications would be processed ‘within 30 min’ (OECD, 2021a: 9). At the very outset, the Minister tasked his own experts with the matter, concretely his two agencies having relevant competences: the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters (SIF) and the Federal Administration of Finance (AFF). The latter is the agency in charge of the state budget, and which controls the cash. The former would be suited to coordinating the cooperation with the banks. The concretisation of the idea would mean creating a legal basis allowing the Ministry to invest an amount of funds for the new facility. However, it quickly became clear that having the money and a legal basis would not be enough. How could the Finance Ministry alone implement a measure that is directed at private SMEs? Hence, experts at the Finance Department asked the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) to participate. From that point on, a sort of quasi-informal working group consisting of members of SIF, AFF and SECO took shape (in line with the ‘network of empowered teams’ trademark of agility). Minister Maurer himself used the term ‘Teamwork’ to describe the way in which the scheme was prepared (Kellerhals and BGS, 2021: V).

Conceptualisation, design and implementation process

Whereas the deliverable – a system that can grant loans within 30 min and a zero cost to any SME – was clear from the outset, it is noteworthy that no project organisation was formally set up, not even a kind of organisational structure, nor mandates, roles and competences clearly defined. No work procedures were defined either. There was no time for that. The people involved were only guided by and concentrating on the deliverable (in line with the ‘North Star’ trademark of agility). In parallel to the already ongoing work, an informal conversation took place with the main Swiss political parties, business associations (e.g. economiesuisse,⁵ USAM/SGV⁶) and the Swiss Bankers Association (ASB),⁷ who supported the endeavour. Although it remained relatively informal, such political support was essential to proceed. This cooperation did not happen offhandedly. The Swiss Bankers Association underscored the key role of good networking and short communication lines (gute Vernetzung und kurze Wege; Gasser, 2021: 35), again, in line with the ‘network’ trademark of agility.

As SECO contributed to the project with its precious experience of administering an array of schemes to SMEs, it became clear that there was still something missing to move on. Who would actually transfer the money to each SME, so to say physically? Definitely not SECO employees. At that stage, the project took a new dimension once again. Swiss banks had to be involved. All banks. Each SME's bank account is with its own bank, and only banks know their clients in person. Thus, SIF negotiated with the ASB, and a small group took shape with ASB and five banks (Media Center of the Confederation, 25.3.2020, statement by André Helfenstein). Considering the unprecedented magnitude of the credits, which would be granted at a 0.0% rate of interest for COVID-19 credits and a 0.5% or higher for COVID-Plus loans, the Swiss National Bank joined the process with a special refinancing facility for eligible banks.⁸

The duration of the facility was set in Article 11 of the Ordinance and limited to 31 July 2020. Thus, time was short to identify the scheme's weaknesses and undertake improvements and refinements. As the implementation challenges became clearer, it also meant that the group would have to step into unchartered territory. With so many diverse actors involved (banks, the four cooperatives, the State), it was essential to ensure the uniformity of the application forms used and the loan contracts to be signed, be it only to allow the central registration of the credits. A total of 123 banking institutes would be involved in the implementation (Vuichard, 2020) with a multiple number of local bank offices. In normal circumstances, each of them is free to format their contracts as they please. This is where SECO became instrumental. It proposed to make its easygov.swiss platform available for that purpose.

The idea was that the platform could be reconfigured to host the COVID-credit application process and the preparation of the credit agreement before it was sent by the applicants to their banker. Doing so, every contract, whatever the bank office, would be identical, and applicants’ information would be easy to centralise. However, another challenge, related to having hundreds of bank outlets implementing a nationwide measure, needed to be solved. How to ensure that the same company does not apply twice? Especially with SMEs, company names are not always unambiguous. Luckily, the Federal Office of Statistics had developed and assigned a ‘unique’ identification number for enterprises, the UID. Hence, although not all banks were using that number in their dealings with customers, SECO requested it in the COVID-credit application procedure. Within the short deadline, a Swiss IT company, ELCA,⁹ together with the Swiss Consulting firm AWK, did the job of programming all the needed reconfigurations and extensions of SECO's digital tools (Vuichard, 2020).

It also quickly became clear that a flood of information requests was to be expected, which is why an information concept was created. SECO opened a hotline and mobilised dozens of its idle staff whose normal activities had temporarily ceased to exist owing to COVID. By that time, all of them had already been put into home office mode, and hence had to be taught at a distance and work for the hotline from home. But this would not be enough, and SECO also hired a specialised company, Callpoint AG, to join forces for communication purposes (Vuichard, 2020). Callpoint AG, which had already worked under contract on easygov.swiss, mobilised 120–150 persons to serve the COVID-credit hotline. To be able to deal with more technical and legal requests from companies, idle SECO staff and a private company were obviously not appropriate. The four guarantee cooperatives are the best experts in terms of guarantees, and were thus tasked with this role. Owing to their small size, however, they had to outsource this to private law firms meanwhile retaining control. Some large banks also set up their own hotline for clients. All that led to a multilayered but effective information concept. Everyone knew in what circumstance they were to redirect a caller, and to what hotline.

While a massive scaling up of personnel had to take place in the four cooperatives (Vuichard, 2020), banks too had to solve bottlenecks. The hundreds of staff put on reserve were requested to process the applications and transmit them to the guarantee cooperatives, partly manually. However, after the launch of the facility, this proved to be insufficient, and the guarantee cooperatives contracted PwC to help (Vuichard, 2020). PwC employed up to 200 persons to ensure that customer information was transferred from the banks to the guarantee cooperatives’ joint database quickly and accurately, manually in the very beginning. This still proved insufficient and the process had to be further digitalised. Within 20 days of the launch of the facility, the necessary extension of IT tools had been programmed by PwC and could be rolled out, which included necessary adjustments to the electronic form and a corresponding modification of the Ordinance.¹⁰ This is where a fundamental innovation came. Part of the manual work to be performed by PwC was to check the applications. For the first time in the Swiss e-administration practice, an algorithm was prepared to computerise the verification of applications as well as their transfer into the guarantee cooperatives’ joint database. The algorithm, programmed by PwC under a contract with the guarantee cooperatives, checked about 25 items in the application and extracted the few that needed further human examination. Concretely, the robotic process automation (RPA) of PwC would read the entries in the application forms, implement the controls and upload the data onto the data banks of the guarantee cooperatives. With this, PwC could solve the issue of the switch from an analogue basis (manually filled forms) to the digital basis. The quality of automatic reading of the forms improved over time thanks to the machine-learning component of the algorithm.

The migration of the application form processing from an analogue system to a digital one illustrates an aspect of agility: learning by doing (cf. McKinsey's ‘rapid learning cycles’ and ‘continuous learning’). Under normal administration procedures, such a transformation would be prepared in several progressive steps, such as project design, prototyping, testing, pilot phase, evaluation and final implementation. In this case, the idea was implemented, and all improvements and adjustments discovered and fixed ‘on the job’ as the problems arose. This administration had never tested the automatised processing of forms, but they literally learned by doing on a one-to-one scale.

Besides the many step-by-step adjustments presented thus far in this section (integration of new stakeholders, creation of new working procedures, re-purposing of tools and databases, etc.), a closer analysis of the unfolding of the project highlights other aspects of learning by doing. As said, in ‘normal’ times an administration would come up, after months of detailed preparation, with a definitive project. In the scheme finalised on 25 March not every detail was settled. The ordinance contained lacunas and missing links, quite understandably. The main stakeholders had prepared a joint working document where emerging issues were recorded on a daily basis, and fixed, and the fixes were then reflected in the scheme's official documentation. In ‘normal’ times, this would never happen.

The above also underscores a recurring question: could an administration follow such agile organisation over a longer period. The level of risk taken, the level of inbuilt trust among participants, and the continuous fixing-on-the-job mode: all that points to answering ‘no’ to the question.

Lessons learned

The COVID-19 credit system was established in about 10 days. From the day the facility entered into force, most applicants that already had a bank account received the money within a day. Ten days would in ‘normal’ times barely be enough to set out and agree on an organisational chart for the project, or to prepare the bidding process for sub-contracting a service to a private company. How can an administration that is used to such ‘normal’ timeframes and bureaucratic procedures suddenly increase its efficiency exponentially while delivering successful innovative outputs?

A striking feature of the process outlined in the section ‘Conceptualisation, design and implementation process’ is that no procedural or organisational guidance was established. The ‘what’ was clear but the ‘how’ was left up to the participants, who de facto had a high degree of empowerment. And participants’ preference was clearly to keep everything informal. In the absence of top-down requirements, an alternative could have been to agree among participants on procedural rules. This was not attempted.

There was no attempt to work on the structure of a project organisation, nor to define roles and competences. Internal and external relations were established and managed according to the principles of informal networks. All in all, this came very close to McKinsey's ‘network of empowered teams’ trademark of agility. In contrast, and unlike many ‘normal times’ government projects, the deliverable had been clearly defined from the very outset and this acted as a powerful driver of the process (again, the North Star trademark).

This managerial approach also coincides with Joyce's (2021: 538) ‘alternative’ decision-making style, a pragmatic and experimental one, suited for management of novel crises.

An important aspect to clarify is the causality between the conditions just described and the outcome, and thus to better understand what these special conditions meant in practice. The main feature was the pressure of urgency (10 days). In normal structures and procedures, the focus is often on the risks. Under this pressure, all energy and available time are devoted to the result. This enhanced inclination to take up risks tends to ease organisational innovation. Under time pressure, there is no time to explain in detail all the consequences of a new proposed idea. Those are quite significant differences to ‘normal’ administrative practice, and probably explain (part of) the causal link between conditions and result.

Looking at how Minister Maurer's initiative was processed within the administration, it meets all the criteria of the definition of a ‘project’ according to project management theories:

• it is limited in time;

• its participants are drawn from line units;

• it generates its own costs;

• it is geared to one deliverable.

Under any standards, a project involving several government agencies, a central bank, numerous private companies, a few subcontractors, political outreach and a high volume of money and risk would be categorised as a so-called ‘complex project’ and managed accordingly, as taught by project management theory. A ‘project charter’ would be drafted and a project organisation would be set up, with a formal organisation chart. Mandates and competences would be established. The common ‘plans’ would be prepared, e.g. for stakeholder management, procurement and bidding, communication, risk management and quality control, to name the main ones. Internal communication would be structured. None of that was done here.

The quasi-informal functioning of this endeavour had consequences. A major one was that in the absence of structure or procedures, information could flow virtually on an instantaneous basis, among participants and along the hierarchical ladder (in line with the ‘rapid decision cycles’ trademark of agility and its related activities).

Real-time information flow combined with the absence of formality led to other new possibilities. For instance, the other stunning fact in the operations described above is that all of the components of the project were performed in parallel instead of sequentially. Arguably, without real-time internal information-sharing this would not be workable. Relevant information and, crucially, decisions, would invariably reach their addressee too late, i.e. at a time when too much of the work done would need to be redone, leading to a series of problems.

This is probably why governments first enact a legal basis and only thereafter proceed with the implementing acts. Public administrations have a tradition of thinking ‘concept, policy and framework first – implementation later’. Here, everything had to be designed in parallel and ready by the same day, on 25 March. This meant that a change somewhere required immediate adjustment elsewhere (again, the ‘rapid iteration’ of agility). This experience may echo the concluding question raised in Mergel et al.'s (2018) literature review: ‘As with any emerging area of study and practice, there are a number of research questions that require exploration’, specifically:

An open question is the extent to which agile approaches can work within traditional command-and-control structures of government. Bureaucracies generally are not designed for shared leadership or open collaboration approaches across ad hoc teams. It is unclear how a bureaucracy, often intentionally designed to move slowly and methodically, can become more agile – or what governments may need to do to move their organizational structures, […] communication structures, […] to adopt and implement agile methods. More research is needed to understand how bureaucracies can adapt or how agile approaches can be aligned with the needs of bureaucracies and their regulations.

The Swiss case tends to show that bureaucracies ‘can adapt’ and that ‘can become more agile’. For the reasons already mentioned, the banks could not just be mandated to contract the loans with their clients. It proved crucial for the project's success that the application and contract preparation procedures be centralised. The imaginative trick for that purpose was that for a client to apply for a credit with his bank, he had to pass through a central government-administered digital platform. Given that the government, concretely SECO, held the full operational control of the platform, this allowed the process to be fine-tuned in an optimal manner, and crucially, at any point in time. An important innovation was that the usual downloadable application form to be filled in was replaced 48 h after initial going-live by an online ‘guided process’ for optimal user experience, resulting in the computerised generation of a contract. Some banks did open their own online application platform, but only as an entry point to SECO's easygov.swiss.

The Swiss scheme was recognised as successful, both in Switzerland and internationally. An OECD study (2021c: 9) observed that ‘loans can be provided within 30 min’, while in contrast ‘[t]he UK Bounce Back Loans implement by the Bank of England for instance allowed for approval of loans for existing customers within 24 to 72 h, but with expected default ranges of between 35% and 60%’ (see also NAO, 2020: 11). The OECD study posits that ‘[i]n ensuring rapid delivery, two factors appear to have been particularly important: low administrative thresholds for accessing government support and digital delivery systems’. This (deliberate) feature of the scheme proved essential not only for the user. It proved essential for the whole economy. Amidst a crisis such as March 2020 it was vital to keep everybody's confidence in the system itself. Minister Maurer's will was to re-establish a sentiment of safety and confidence in the economy. To reach this, words are not enough, and the news, after the first day of implementation, that all companies in need had got and would get support in only 30 min yielded a fundamental psychological impact. The section ‘Content of the COVID-19 Credit Ordinance and implementation modalities’ will turn to this important issue of ‘simplicity’. Pauletto (2022) also elaborates on monitoring measures, which constitute a tool for drawing further lessons.

Key enablers and factors of success

Research question 3 of this article pertains to the prerequisites for the successful operation of the project.

One is that functioning networks already existed, with a critical mass of people at all levels who were already used to cooperating with each other. Project management theories stress the importance of socialising activities between participants to a newly launched project. In the case at hand, socialisation was to a large extent well rooted.

Another factor was that the project faced no political opposition (political parties, banking community). If political arbitrage and negotiations had had to take place, the timely implementation of the project would not have been possible.

Another key enabler of the project was the public–private deal with banks. All banks that had private local customers, in total 123 institutes (Vuichard, 2020), agreed to participate, which means that they had an obligation under the Ordinance to grant the credit in principle to every customer applying for it.

Last but not least, digital tools deserve the final considerations of this section. As stated, SECO and the guarantee cooperatives were instrumental in making the facility become reality by providing the whole computerised environment needed to process, channel and finally store the applications, as well as the public information tools supporting the scheme (hotlines). The lesson to be learned in that respect is that once a crisis has burst, it is too late to put up the necessary digital infrastructure from scratch. In this case they could be borrowed from somewhere, namely SECO's easygov.swiss platform as well as the guarantee cooperatives’ joint database. In the short timeframe available, SECO and its contracting partners were agile enough to design a computerised application form including a customer-oriented guided process and link it to easygov.swiss. It was also possible to engineer the algorithmic bots needed for the computerised verification of applications. Yet this, although it is already a lot, is probably the maximum that could be achieved in an emergency.

Having already adopted a technology or tool or at least working on it is a prerequisite not only for government agencies involved, but also for service suppliers hired to support the roll-out. The Swiss companies named in the section ‘Conceptualisation, design and implementation process’ were working or had previously worked with SECO in the context of those very tools. They did not need to get acquainted with them, nor to SECO's working method and corporate culture. Instead, they could immediately focus on one thing only: the deliverable – very much like other government and private stakeholders in the project (the North Star again).

More generally, the issue of sequential ambidexterity has some relevance. With this case, the Swiss administration has shown an ability to switch to an ‘exploration’ mode almost instantly as the crisis broke out, i.e. an ability to efficiently apply ambidexterity. The question is how and why. Peng et al. (2022) state that ‘sequential ambidexterity is dependent on four mechanisms:

• - senior manager cognition of the environment;

• - organisation learning orientation;

• - organisation structure design;

• - and process reconfiguration.’

Both the case at hand and similar cases in other countries could serve to assess which ones of those mechanisms were the most prominent in allowing such shift. This is certainly a valuable area for further research.

Content of the COVID-19 Credit Ordinance and implementation modalities

If the project was agile in adapting its method of work and developing novel implementation instruments (see the section ‘Initiation, conceptualisation and design process’), it was equally agile in terms of the granted support, eligibility criteria and other terms and conditions.

The whole scheme that was developed was user-friendly, practical and easy to explain and to understand. In one word: it was simple. One key feature of the procedure is that it requested the applicants to fill in only data and information that were strictly necessary to process the application. This was the essential factor of success of the scheme in terms of uptake and speed. Applicants were able to fill in their application in record time, and formal verification could be performed swiftly, even when it was done entirely manually. In a nutshell, applicants had to provide their annual turnover, declare that they incurred a substantial loss owing to the pandemic, state that they did not receive other COVID-related guarantees, that they were not in the process of a bankruptcy and that they were founded before 1 March 2020 (Art. 3 of the Ordinance). The rationale for keeping a sense of focus in e-government projects is underscored in Pauletto's (2021) recommendation that ‘in case new technologies are introduced, they shall serve good purposes’, concretely ‘new technologies shall serve to simplify and facilitate administrative processes, not encourage some authorities to multiply the controls and create an inflation of control items simply because it becomes possible’.

Although the term ‘self-declaration’ is not used in the Ordinance, this is in effect what the scheme de facto amounted to (maintaining the liability of the applicant under criminal law in case of fraud, however). The Ordinance spelled out eligibility criteria: during the online application procedure, the applicant was required to tick those criteria individually, and if the application was complete and all criteria ticked, the bank would practically automatically subscribe to the credit contract and open the line of credit. There was no ex-ante material verification of the applicant's declaration, just a formal verification (completeness, consistency, etc.). This approach was nicknamed ‘lend first, check later’ (OECD, 2020c).

This leads to a critical remark: the facility at hand represents a shift in policy and administrative philosophy – a shift Mr Maurer was very conscious of (Media Center of the Confederation, 2020).¹¹ That is to say, a deliberate departure from the zero-risk/zero-error principle.

Replicability, or not

Now, it is possible to look back and the question is whether anything could be replicable. Replicability was not retained among the five research questions of this paper – deliberately so. Proposing, ex abstracto, a yes-or-no view on that question would not seem very meaningful. However, a brief discussion of that question does fall within the purview of this paper. The question should be carefully framed, though. Replication could mean replication in the case of a future emergency or replication in the business-as-usual operation of an administration. And in both cases, it could be replication in Switzerland or in any country.

With regard to replication in the case of a future emergency, it is a truism to state that emergencies are never identical – if a situation was the same as one already experienced, it would hardly qualify as an emergency. Emergency does not just derive from the cost of an impact.

With regard to lessons learned to inform the ‘business as usual’ methods of administration, some caution not to jump to hasty conclusions is warranted. If the positive side of the emergency was that it forced people to work more efficiently, why return to old routine after the emergency? The whole undertaking lasted about 10 days. This raises the question as to whether the same might be replicable for longer periods. Arguably, the longer the period is, the less sustainable it would be to have so many diverse entities and people working without structure and procedures. While there obviously is a time limit within which it can be sustained, the exact limit would vary from case to case.

Whatever the above caveats, if one thing does emerge from the present case study, it is that when people are adequately empowered and networked, when information is allowed to flow on a real-time basis, when there is a clear objective, leadership, a flat structure and role mobility, then organisations can work and deliver swiftly and creatively, even without the procedures and structure they are used to – or perhaps thanks to the absence thereof. Arguably, respective organisations should find their own ways – and most did so during this global emergency – but in any case, they should be prepared to make radical changes in their working practices. A follow-up question is whether it is conceivable to ‘train’ units in general administration for that purpose, just like crisis simulations are trained in emergency services such as the fire brigade.

Conclusions

If one finding emerges from this case study, it is that a public administration was able to deliver even without established procedures and structures, provided that its objective was clear and certain other requisites were fulfilled (cf. the section ‘Conceptualisation, design and implementation process’). Working under no specific emergency procedures or organisation, and obviously ignoring standard procedures, the Swiss administration produced the requested deliverable in record time, and well. In a sense, this case shows that not having to follow a predefined ‘crisis organisation’ or ‘crisis plans’ needs to be rated positively. Allowing for an agile governance probably explains in whole or in part the success of that undertaking. As a matter of fact, a closer examination of the project's governance and organisation shows an amazing number of commonalities with McKinsey's concept of agility, especially the five ‘trademarks’ and 23 ‘practices’ of an agile organisation.

Designed in just 10 days, the package proved successful. From the very first transactions on 26 March 2020 at 8 a.m., the scheme proved to work smoothly and efficiently. Individual applications were processed and transmitted to the guarantee cooperatives within a very short time, and the line of credit was opened on the applicant's bank account – sometimes within only 30 min. It became clear that no company would close just because of the pandemic. The feared liquidity crisis of the type witnessed in the aftermath of the 2008 Lehman Brothers crisis did not occur. Trust in the Swiss banking system remained intact.

The creativity unleashed in this undertaking pertains not only to the way participants found new methods of work and interaction. Also in terms of output, there was no lack of creativity. For the first time in Swiss e-administration emergency practice, an algorithm-based bot was programmed to generate the applications and store them in a central database. An emergency measure was implemented in a public–private partnership between banks, the Federal administration and the guarantee cooperatives. The usual downloadable application form to be filled in was replaced by a customer-oriented online ‘guided process’ resulting in the computerised generation of a contract. The unique company identification number (UID) effectively became a standard part of the client data processed by banks everywhere in Switzerland.

Granted, what was missing and might have helped was an accredited e-signature. This would allow the signing of contracts online, instead of having to print, sign and mail them.

Besides allowing the administration to operate throughout in a quasi-informal manner, other distinctive key factors of success may be identified. The various layers of implementation tasks and entities were identified rapidly during the design process. The conceptualisation, framework, implementation modalities, adaptation or adoption of IT tools, and public communication were all worked out concomitantly rather than sequentially, which in turn made a rapid-iteration practice requisite. Information was free to flow on a real-time basis among project participants.

On a more practical note, a prerequisite for success was the existence of active and functioning networks. In terms of infrastructure, a prerequisite was certainly that IT tools were already in use or in advanced stages of experimentation in some units of the government, which made them available to this project.

Last but not least, organisational ambidexterity and political leadership were key to success.

Biography

Christian Pauletto is an associate professor with the International University in Geneva (IUG). His research publications and teaching activities focus on intergovernmental cooperation and public governance, especially in international digital issues.