Cost-cutting measures at the FSO: Federal Council amends ordinance

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At its meeting on 9 September 2026, the Federal Council adopted the revision of the annexes to the Federal Statistics Ordinance (FSO). It is thus implementing, at ordinance level, the package of measures decided a year ago to overcome the structural deficit of the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). To reduce costs, the FSO has, among other things, reduced the number of its statistical information products.

Due to additional tasks, rising costs and various savings requirements decided by the Federal Council and Parliament, the FSO had a structural deficit of around CHF 20 million in 2025. The Federal Council therefore decided on two packages of measures on 6 June 2025. Package of measures 1 includes the discontinuation of the Swiss Library Statistics and of the supplementary and additional survey of the agricultural holdings census. In addition, certain surveys and one data collection are to be conducted less frequently: these include the construction and housing statistics, the statistics on environmental protection expenditure and the land use statistics. As a result, the FSO was able to suspend or postpone various surveys and data collections. In 2025, a balanced result was achieved, also thanks to further measures, for example in the human resources and IT areas. Package of measures 2 concerns the handling of register data and is currently being developed.

To implement the measures decided at ordinance level as well, the Federal Council adopted the necessary amendments to Annex 1 of the FSO at its meeting on 9 September 2026. This enables the FSO to continue implementing the savings measures in the field of statistics. At the same time, the Federal Council used the revision to make minor corrections to Annexes 1 and 2.

Cost-cutting measures at the FSO: Federal Council amends ordinance

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