The Canton of Ticino is taking a significant step toward digital sovereignty by adopting Apertus, the open‑source language model developed by ETH Zurich, EPFL and CSCS, to support translation activities within the public administration. The solution, developed by the Ticino‑based company Artificialy and implemented by the Cantonal Information Systems Center (CSI), is hosted directly within cantonal data centers, allowing the administration to retain full control over data and ensure maximum protection of citizens’ sensitive information.

The system enables secure translation of documents into multiple languages, including German, French, Romanian and Ukrainian, without relying on external services and without data ever leaving the public infrastructure. For this project, Apertus 8B was selected and optimized through an advanced fine‑tuning process to precisely address the operational needs of the public administration.

This represents the first operational use of the Apertus model by a Swiss public authority, confirming the Canton of Ticino’s commitment to transparent, reliable and ethically driven technological solutions. An initial testing phase will involve around 100 employees of the cantonal administration, whose feedback will be essential for the future evolution of the system.

To learn more, you can read the full article on the CSCS website, here.