HAVEL & PARTNERS participated in drafting the Right to Digital Services Act that became the Act of the Year 2019

30. 4. 2020

The winner of the 11th Act of the Year survey is the Right to Digital Services Act (“Act”), which will, in many respects, simplify the communication between companies and citizens on the one side and authorities on the other side. The legislation, which is also called the “Digital Constitution”, has been prepared with the legislative participation of the HAVEL & PARTNERS team headed by František Korbel, the firm’s partner, a member of the Legislative Council of the Government and a former legislative Deputy Minister of Justice of the Czech Republic.

“Thanks to the excellent digitisation expertise and unique know-how that we have at HAVEL & PARTNERS, we have gained the opportunity to participate jointly with the ICT Union in the preparation of the bill. My colleagues and I very much appreciate this opportunity and we are happy that the Act of the Year award has been won by a piece of legislation that is expected to fuel a digitisation boom in public administration from the start of next year and take the Czech Republic from the lower ranks in ratings assessing the level of digital advancement and eGovernment digitisation,” adds František Korbel regarding the work on the bill.

The Act introduces a catalogue of all services for citizens, including a clear deadline and method of digitisation for each service. It also deals with data transfers among authorities – the same information will no longer need to be stated repeatedly at each office and will be pre-entered automatically in online forms. The Act also supports the use of open formats or specifies the use of cloud services that may bring considerable savings in hardware costs.

The Act of the Year is a joint project of businesses, associations and other entities engaged in the quality of business regulation in the Czech Republic. The survey is organised by Deloitte Legal and the patronage of the project is regularly assumed by the Czech Bar Association, the Chamber of Commerce of the Czech Republic and the Czech Chamber of Tax Advisers. More details about the project are available here.