A key component of an amended law on information systems in public administration should establish “Czech Points,” a network of places where citizens and state officials can connect by means of paperless communication. If the law, currently in the first reading in the lower house of Parliament, is passed, the Ministry of Informatics plans to roll out the information exchange facilities.
In short, under e-government, it will be the information itself that hurriedly circulates among the various public bodies instead of the hot and bothered citizen carrying the information in the form of paper documents from one institution across town to another.
“Everybody here talks about it as if it was the abominable snowman, but we will try to make it a reality,” Langer said of the prospect for the electronic exchange of information.
In the first phase of the Czech Points project, citizens should be able to collect statements from registries and other records by going to just one place. The Czech Points will be established in 1,400 registries of births, marriages and deaths, and in branches of the state-owned postal service Česká pošta.
The ministry wants to launch a pilot project of 33 Czech Points in the near future, with the commercial launch of the network tentatively scheduled for Jan. 1, 2008.
Breakthrough in thinking
The second phase of the Czech Point project is tied to another e-government bill that has already been published and put up for discussion and feedback on the Ministry of Informatics’ Web page, www.micr.cz. If the bill is passed as expected, people will be able to file information at the Czech Points.
The envisaged e-government act will also allow for the creation of electronic registries of citizens, certain groups of people, addresses, properties, and rights and duties. Citizens will be able to communicate with all the registries from any one Czech Point, and the registries will also communicate with each other.
“It will be a breakthrough for Austro-Hungarian administrative thinking,” Langer said, though he added the e-government bill will be more difficult to implement as state and public officials’ attitudes will be difficult to change. The bill should be valid as of Jan. 1, 2008, Langer said.
In addition, e-government will bring more competition among individual state and public branches of administration as the fees each will be entitled to collect won’t be centrally set. Each office will be given permission to charge between Kč 5 and Kč 50 per page of a document, according to Da libor Veřmiřovský, Lan ger’s deputy.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” said Jiří Polák, president of the Association for an Information Society (SPIS), adding that the association is willing to continue cooperating with the ministry to bring the Czech Republic to a more advanced stage in cutting red tape with information systems.
Last year, the Czech Republic ranked 21st among the 25 European Union members in terms of the quality and availability of public administration electronic services. That contrasted with 19th place in 2004, when the last such statistic was published. The country lags similarly among the 10 new EU members. It fell from 5th place in 2004 to 7th place in 2006.
Ranked among the whole EU, the new EU members that made the most progress are Malta and Estonia. They jumped from 16th and 8th place to 2nd and 3rd, respectively.
The Czech Republic has improved its e-government services since the 2004 survey, but other countries simply made bigger and better strides, according to the SPIS.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Pavla Kozáková
Quelle/Source: Czech Business Weekly, 19.03.2007
