Together for cutting-edge digital government services

There is a lack of continuous political leadership - guidance and support for the transformation of public administration.

Without political support, it is not possible to secure enough money, people or a mandate to push through major changes that require legislative changes, budget allocations and the implementation of projects that go beyond a single electoral term.

Digitisation is a complex topic, few individuals understand it in depth. It brings together the complex and closed worlds of IT and public administration. People with an understanding of both areas are minimal.

• Political umbrella at the level of the entire government, including the Prime Minister, consolidating priorities and setting measurable targets.
  
• Delegate a person with authority to other members of government and the budget to ensure continuity in central coordination and development of the "horizontal" digital transformation.
  
• Have an experienced manager (ideally at the level of director/department head) in the top management of each department and central government body responsible for the day-to-day management of digitisation projects with executive authority across the institution.
  

• It will meet the expectations of citizens and businesses who take the state's digital services for granted.
  
• Thanks to quality services, it will reduce barriers to their use and allow limited resources to be focused where they are most needed - on supporting more than 1.5 million digitally excluded peopleČesko.Digital, 2024).
  
• It will bring more efficient use of public money and more user-friendly services through stronger coordination across departments and the use of common standards.
  

Lack of capacity and skills - the state is critically short of the necessary ICT experts.

The state has long failed to attract and retain ICT experts. Poor financial remuneration and a work environment that does not meet modern standards are leading to a talent drain. The state is losing competencies and becoming dependent on contractors. On average, ICT workers in the public administration have salaries that are about 40% lower than in the private sector (CSO, 2024), i.e. 42,000 CZK less per month.

The lack of experts then reduces the efficiency of technology spending and threatens the fulfilment of legal obligations. Because of this, the state is not a competent contracting authority. This further affects the quality of services.

• Map the situation and reduce the differences between authorities
  
  • Map the situation between the authorities
    
  • Reduce the gap with the private sector to a competitive level
    
  • Adopt adequate budgetary measures in selected ministries
    
• Improve working conditions
  through non-monetary and most sought after benefits
  
• Motivate
  executiveswith target rewards
  

More efficient and higher quality services through better project management and procurement.

There is a lack of service quality management - systematic management of the quality of state services.

Although the Czech Republic invests billions in digitalisation, it does not systematically measure the quality of services or their use by citizens and companies. In a survey of citizens, we identified, among other things, a huge gap between their high expectations of availability and accessibility of services and low satisfaction with the actual situation.

The stated goals of the state digitisation strategies do not correspond to the actual measured results. Although service quality measurement is formally required, it is lacking in practice and not systematically implemented. There is neither a functional feedback mechanism nor comprehensive quality management. Therefore, the state does not have the tools to monitor and improve digital services.

• Establish a common measurement framework
  
  • Measure satisfaction, efficiency and quality of digital services and monitor life situations

    
• Regular reporting
  • Results shared with members of the government along with ZoPDS
    
  • Collect and evaluate feedback on the 30 most used services in the first year of government
    
• Introduce the role of product owner
  and thus ensure better management of IT projects
  

It will enable digitalisation management, more efficient investments and growth in overall service satisfaction.

Departmentalism - the isolated functioning of authorities leads to inefficiency, duplication and lower satisfaction with services.

Departmentalism is one of the main obstacles to digitisation, as it causes fragmentation of services, inability to share data and inefficient use of resources due to duplicated information systems. Lack of data sharing and repeated investments in similar solutions reduce the efficiency of the whole system and the DIA alone cannot overcome this problem without strong political representation.

• Strengthen DIA's role in central coordination, including the possibility of funding
  
• Consistently implement data sharing only once (Digital Service Rights Act - ZoPDS) by 2/2027
  
• Eliminate duplicates in information systems
  
• Expand the use of shared components
  
• Strengthen the Single State Interface through the Citizen Portal
  

Higher user satisfaction through time savings, greater efficiency through reduced duplication and more effective investments.

The state lacks modern legislation that would enable automation of services and efficient work with data.

Current technological developments offer an opportunity for the state to gradually recede into the background - some agendas could be handled automatically, without burdening users, often with their confirmation. This could make digital services more understandable, user-friendly and mean a real reduction in bureaucracy.

In the future, the state could actively offer services to people according to their life situation - for example, to parents, students or the elderly. To do this, it needs to start working better with the data available. However, today there is a lack of adequate laws and regulations to make this work.

The way in which legislation is created is also a problem. New laws are often drafted without the participation of multidisciplinary teams, including IT experts, legislators, subject matter specialists and other key professions. The result is standards that are difficult to translate into digital form - and thus complicate the modernisation of public services.

• Adopt the legislation necessary to automate administrative procedures and improve the quality of data management in public administration.
  
• Consistently apply the principles of digital-ready legislation, following the example of Denmark.
  

• Greater efficiency through automation on the government side
  
• Enabling data-driven decision making
  
• Reducing the bureaucratic burden on service users