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156 Lucienne Rey

“cyberadministration” on the cantonal level, the German part of
Switzerland shows a certain delay in developing Internet activities,
even if today (in July 1998) this retardation is made up.
At the lowest level, the Swiss Confederation consists of local po-
litical authorities—the communes—which, according to the Swiss
Federal Chancellery (1998: 3), currently number 2,942. This number
is diminishing as local authorities combine. This is shown also by
the indications in the Swiss yearbook of the public life, Publicus,
which specify the number of communes with 3,015. As the indica-
tions in Publicus are more detailed, I will base my work on this data.
In addition to the tasks entrusted to them by the Federation
(such as registering the population and civil defense), the local au-
thorities also have specific responsibilities for education and social
welfare, energy supply, road building, local planning, taxation, etc.
To a large extent, these powers are self-regulated. Still according to
the Publicus, there are a total of 3,015 communes in Switzerland:
1,768 are German-speaking, 905 are French-speaking, 270 are in the
Italian area and, finally, Rhaeto-Romansch is spoken in 72 (Schwabe
and Co. 1997, 153).

Figure 4
Homepages of Swiss Communes with more
than 5,000 Inhabitants

Source: Basemap © SFSO Geostat / S F