You are Andrea Zumbrunn, director of the Kantonales Amt für Bürgerdienste (KABD), the citizen-services agency of the Swiss canton of Brunnental. Parliament wants an artificial-intelligence plan that clears a 14,000-case backlog without repeating the failure that has just shut down a neighbouring canton's benefits system. Before you pick any system, on 15 June 2026 you have to settle how your agency will rank the four on the table.
The situation
KABD handles residency permits, social benefits, business registrations and tax documents for the canton's 620,000 residents, with 540 civil servants, one central office and six service points. It is the institution the canton trusts most: 72% public trust. It is also slow: 14,000 pending cases, 19 days of average processing and a citizen-satisfaction score of 61 out of 100. Its own data-protection assessment scores its safeguards at 40 out of 100.
On 11 June the neighbouring canton suspended its automated benefits-eligibility system: a newspaper showed it disadvantaged applicants by postal code and household language. Two days later parliament asked you for an AI modernisation plan, to be defended before its oversight committee in the last week of the quarter. You have CHF 6.5 million ring-fenced.
Marco Iten, your digital programme lead, has shortlisted four systems: intake document triage, benefits eligibility scoring, a multilingual chatbot and fraud-anomaly detection. His team tagged each by how directly it touches a citizen's rights, and projects that the programme would cut the wait from 19 days to 6 and save about CHF 2 million a year. Together the four cost more than you have: one goes first.
Inside the agency there are two camps. Selina Egger's service managers want the biggest backlog win first: anyone waiting 19 days is being harmed already. The group around Béatrice Roth, your legal and data-protection officer, wants no automated system near an entitlement decision until the neighbouring canton's inquiry reports. An audit of the historical case files is due this quarter, and the reporter who broke the neighbour's story has already asked for an interview.