Establishing a national address service

A national address service means less work to search for a place of residence during administrative processes 

In the case of many administrative processes, the competent authority contacts the person concerned in writing. In various administrative procedures, a person's place of residence is also decisive in determining which authority is responsible for a particular procedure. At present, home addresses are only partially available to administrations. Therefore, they often have to go to great lengths to obtain addresses and usually have to involve other authorities in the process. With the national address service, such processes will be simplified and tasks will be performed more efficiently. This will benefit public administrations and other bodies that need this information to fulfil their statutory mandates. 

The planned Federal Act on the National Address Query System for Individuals (Address Service Act) should create the basis for the Confederation to provide a national address service. At the end of December 2020, the Federal Council took note of the consultation results and instructed the Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA) to examine individual results in greater depth and to prepare a dispatch (adoption by the Federal Council planned for 2022). The Federal Statistical Office is responsible for setting up the national address service. 

Implementation plan objective 10/21 

Establishing a national address service 

«A national address service for authorities and third parties with a statutory mandate makes it possible to perform a nationwide search and comparison for addresses of individuals registered in Switzerland. The new service offers clear added value for any authority that needs this information to fulfil its mandate. The aim is to make it easier and quicker for administrations and third parties to perform their statutory tasks, which will lead to efficiency gains. Furthermore, the quality of address data already held in existing public sector systems should be improved. Individual specialist tasks can thus be performed to a higher quality standard. In the case of written correspondence, cost savings can be achieved by reducing the number of returned items.»