Czech Republic Mid-Term Report 2016-2018

The priorities of the Czech Republic’s third action plan continue from previous action plans, with a heavy focus on open data and professionalization of public administration. The Government Anti-Corruption Council serves as the multistakeholder forum, and the action plan is closely linked to the anti-corruption agenda. Future action plans could benefit from broadening civil society involvement in the consultative forum and designing more ambitious commitments with clear objectives and measurable activities.

Highlights

*Commitment is evaluated by the IRM as specific, relevant, and has a transformative potential impact

Process

OGP is not well known in the public administration and civil society. Awareness-raising for stakeholders and the general public is virtually non-existent through all phases of national OGP process. The multi-stakeholder forum consists of the members of the Anti-Corruption Council and its committees. CSOs participate in discussions on priorities but have a very limited role in implementation oversight.

Czech Republic did not act contrary to OGP process

A country is considered to have acted contrary to process if one or more of the following occurs:

• The National Action Plan was developed with neither online or offline engagements with citizens and civil society
• The government fails to engage with the IRM researchers in charge of the country’s Year 1 and Year 2 reports

The IRM report establishes that there was no progress made on implementing any of the commitments in the country’s action plan

Performance

The Czech Republic’s third action plan contains six commitments across three topics: (i) implementing the adopted Civil Service Act to carry out the depoliticization, professionalization and stabilization of public administration; (ii) improving access to data and information; and (iii) creating safer communities. These priorities were carried over from previous action plans, but implementation is limited with only one commitment complete and one substantially complete.

IRM Recommendations

1. Improve the multistakeholder approach and action plan implementation oversight
2. Improve formulation of the commitments
3. Manage the EU GDPR concerns within open data
4. Enhance transparency of the beneficial ownership register
5. Improve open contracting