Development of a Cost of Living Comparison Platform for Municipalities and Consumers in Switzerland

Due to Switzerland's decentralization and small municipality sizes, it is challenging for residents and newcomers to accurately compare the cost of living across different cities and cantons. Existing resources require users to access multiple sources for taxes, health insurance, rent, and electricity costs, creating a complex and time-consuming process, especially for those unfamiliar with the local systems. This hampers informed decision-making around relocation and policy planning.

A regional government agency or municipality authority seeking to provide residents and prospective movers with reliable, comprehensive cost comparison tools to facilitate informed relocation and policy decisions.

• Develop a digital platform providing unbiased and detailed cost comparisons for taxes, health insurance, rents, electricity prices, and other relevant expenses across Swiss municipalities.
• Enable users to make informed moving or policy decisions based on accurate, up-to-date data integrated into the platform.
• Automate data collection and calculation processes for each cost factor to ensure consistent and reliable outputs.
• Design an intuitive, user-friendly interface that simplifies complex financial data and enhances user engagement.
• Establish a scalable system capable of handling ongoing data updates and expanding functionality if needed.

• Data collection modules to gather user inputs including income, household size, and preferences.
• Integration of external data sources for tax rates, health insurance premiums, rent prices, electricity costs, and other relevant metrics by municipality.
• Complex algorithms to compute total costs considering factors like inflation, taxes, and expenses, enabling accurate cost estimates.
• Responsive, clean user interface with well-designed forms, dropdowns, and validation features for input accuracy.
• Cross-referencing functionalities to validate input data and ensure consistency.
• iterative testing and feedback integration to enhance usability and performance.

• Municipal and national data sources for real-time tax, rent, and utility rates
• APIs for updating and validating data inputs
• Secure authentication systems for user data privacy

• System should support high concurrency and rapid data retrieval with minimal latency
• Ensure data security and compliance with privacy regulations
• Platform should be easily maintainable and extendable for future functionalities
• Reliable uptime with automated testing and monitoring systems

The implementation of this platform aims to streamline cost comparison processes, enabling residents and policymakers to make more informed decisions efficiently. Expected outcomes include increased transparency of municipal costs, reduced time spent on gathering information, and improved decision-making confidence. The system is designed to support scalable data updates, thereby maintaining accuracy over time and enhancing user trust in publicly available cost data.