OSW Commentary - The Czech Republic’s struggle with e-government during the COVID-19 pandemic

An amendment to the law on the education system added distance learning to the list of obligatory forms of education and enabled the Ministry of Education to fund the purchase of hardware and software for a portion of teachers and pupils in primary and lower secondary schools to facilitate distance learning. [...] According to the report compiled by the European Commission, due to prices of mobile broadband offers recorded in Q4 2019, the Czech Republic (alongside Cyprus) was considered one of the EU’s most expensive countries.5 The prices of Czech mobile broadband offers ranged from 22% higher than the EU average price (in the case of the cheapest offer for 1 GB data transfer) to as much as 90% higher than. [...] The problem is clear in large state institutions and bodies, including: the Fiscal Administration, the General Directorate of Czech Railways, the Road and Motorway Directorate of the Czech Republic, Czech Post, health and social insurance institutions, ministries, and the Forests of the Czech Republic (which uses several IT systems provided by different contractors). [...] Society and business are open to digitisation Czech society’s openness to digital solutions and the strong position of Czech companies in the IT sector indicate that the country has major potential for continuing the process of the digitisation of its public services and its economy. [...] There remains a stark disparity between the achievements of Czech companies in the field of digitisation and the relatively insignificant progress in the ongoing implementation of the e-Government project.