Panel discussion: The Digitalization of the Czech Republic 2022+

What needs to be done to rank the Czech Republic among the most successful countries in Europe in digitization?

Panelists


Ondřej Profant

Ondřej Profant, former deputy and representative of the capital city of Prague, today Deputy Minister for Regional Development and Deputy Prime Minister for Digitization Ivan Bartoš. Throughout his political career, he has focused on issues related to digitization and the deployment of open source software.

As a Member of Parliament, he was, for example, behind the draft law on banking identity, which allows communication with authorities through electronic banking data, or the law on the right to digital services, which guarantees citizens the opportunity to communicate with state authorities electronically. One of his priorities as a Member of Parliament was to enforce legislation that would allow him to start a business online in one day.

 

 


Vladimír Dzurilla

Vladimir Dzurilla graduated from the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava, he completed a study stay in the Netherlands and study at the British Open University.

He has worked in Accenture, in O2 as a consultant and management consultant for projects to exchange and implement large IT systems and to implement organizational and process changes. He currently holds the position of Chief Executive Officer of the State enterprise the State Treasury, Shared Services Center, whose main task is to provide ICT services for the state administration and operation of the National Data Centre.

At the same time, he manages the National Agency for Communications and Information Technology, s. e. This agency has been forming the strategies of non-public communication networks, including proposals for the implementation of appropriate security measures and delivering shared services for public administration.

Vladimir Dzurilla also serves as Advisor to the Prime Minister for ICT and Digitization. In this position, he created and implements the strategic concept Digital Czech Republic, which contributes to a significant shift in the field of state IT and digital economy.

He contributed significantly to the creation of the Digital Services Right Act, the Czech Republic’s Innovation Strategy, and other projects for the transformation of public administration.

 


Zdeněk Zajíček

Zdeněk Zajíček, a graduate of the Faculty of Law in Prague and an imaginative innovator, is above all one of the key figures in digitization in our country. The general public knows him primarily as a pioneer in the digitalization of public administration – he has had a number of successful projects during his thirty-year career. With his team, he created the Czech POINT system, Data Boxes and Basic Registers in the first years of the new millennium. After that, he was in charge of ICT, among other things, as a deputy in the ministries.

Since 2016, he has been the head of ICT UNIE (dealing with the introduction of modern information technologies in companies and state administration) and since the autumn of 2020 he has been the vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce. From this position, he managed to prepare and gain the support of deputies across the political spectrum for the Digital Services Right Act, known by the professional public as the “Digital Constitution”, and also for the Banking Identity Act, which provides easier access to the Citizen’s Portal for everyone, who has established internet banking.

 


Michal Bláha

Michal Bláha is the co-founder of atlas.cz, an entrepreneur, investor, holder of several Crystal Magnifiers, including Project of the Year and Personalities of the Year. He is also responsible for the foundation and the state management project HlidacStatu.cz and the Moderni-stat.cz server, where his long-term interest in innovation and digitization of the state and his experience in this area materializes.

 

 

 

 

Moderator


Petr Koubský

Petr is a Czech publicist, information and communication media analyst and educator. He works as an editor for science and technology in Deník N. He has written and translated several books on IT, teaching at the University of Economics and the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. He worked gradually as a programmer, then in Softwarové noviny, he was the editor-in-chief of Inside magazine, the director of iCollege and the publisher of the web magazine 067.