CZ - 2025: Country Fiche

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. State of Play
    1. Coordination
    2. Functioning and coordination of the infrastructure
    3. Usage of the infrastructure for spatial information
    4. Data Sharing Arrangements
    5. Costs and Benefits

Introduction

The INSPIRE Directive sets the minimum conditions for interoperable sharing and exchange of spatial data across Europe as part of a larger European Interoperability Framework and the e-Government Action Plan that contributes to the Digital Single Market Agenda. Article 21 of INSPIRE Directive defines the basic principles for monitoring and reporting. More detailed implementing rules regarding INSPIRE monitoring and reporting have been adopted as Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2019/1372 on the 19th August 2019. This country fiche highlights the progress in the various areas of INSPIRE implementation. It includes information on monitoring 2024 acquired in December 2024 and Member States update

State of Play

A high-level view on the governance, use and impact of the INSPIRE Directive in Czech Republic. More detailed information is available on the INSPIRE knowledge base.

Coordination

National Contact Point

Coordination Structure & Progress:

Coordination structure

Ministry of the Environment (MoE) is responsible for the INSPIRE implementation in the Czech Republic. MoE coordinates the infrastructure using the INSPIRE Coordination Committee established in 2010. Members of Coordination Committee are representatives of all the central bodies (Ministries and other central government bodies) of the Czech Republic (20 members), 2 representatives of associations for regional and local authorities and one representative of the national GI association joining stakeholders from private sector, users, and universities. In agreement with MoE, Czech Environmental Information Agency (CENIA) is responsible for:

Progress

The activities in the year 2024 were divided into the technical and non-technical ones. As part of technical activities, an attempt was made to harmonize data for INSPIRE topics III.4 (Land Use) and III.6 (Utility and Government Services), but the harmonization has not yet taken place due to complex tenders that made it impossible to complete the contracts. In 2023, a subsidy for a new geoportal was approved, which will only continue this year with the award of a public contract for the selection of a supplier. The launch of the full solution is expected in spring 2027. CENIA is entrusted with the construction of the geoportal. The new geoportal will replace the existing solution from 2011. The requirements of Regulation 2023/138 have been met and all INSPIRE metadata, which falls under the HVD, has been successfully published on the National Open Data Catalogue and from there on https://data.europa.eu/ in DCAT format. Within the non-technical activities, there was cooperation on the draft Act on Data Management and Controlled Access to Data, which, among other things, implements the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European data management through the permission of controlled access to data. This Act, in agreement with other ministries, introduces the existence of the Geoportal of the Czech Republic as a single access point for metadata on spatial information and will also include the functionalities of the existing National INSPIRE Geoportal.

Functioning and coordination of the infrastructure

Coordination Committee is chaired by Chief Director of the Section Climate Change Protection of the Ministry of the Environment, co-chaired by the Director of the Digital and Information Agency to ensure links to e-Government, and the vice-chair of the Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping, and Cadastre for continuity on technical issues related to the creation of spatial data. Technical working groups are established to solving specific issues of the implementation. However, in recent times, technical issues have been handled directly with relevant stakeholders in individual meetings or communicated through workshops and conferences rather than through TWG meetings. This situation proves that many data providers are familiar with ongoing activities in INSPIRE and also, that the situation is rather stable. In 2024, one meeting of the Coordination Committee was held. In accordance with the INSPIRE Implementation Strategy the concept of identification and development of National INSPIRE Datasets has concluded by identification of coordinators of INSPIRE themes. These organizations are responsible for fulfilment of the scope of the INSPIRE theme within the extent of the whole country and for all the spatial objects and their attributes required by the data specifications, if possible. They are namely listed in the amendment of law 123/1998 Co. In many cases cooperation of more data providers is needed to cover one INSPIRE theme, either because of the limited coverage of their data sets or because the management of the specific spatial data objects or attributes are responsibility of various organizations. The project, which was supposed to ensure the harmonization of data from topic III.6 (Utilities and Governmental Services), did not bring the expected results and therefore this data is not fully harmonized. On the contrary, the cooperation between network data providers (private companies) and the state in building the Digital Technical Map and the IS Digital Map of Public Administration, which will be centrally operated by the ČÚZK, is working well. National geoportal of urban planning, under coordination of the Ministry for Regional Development, that is supposed to deliver among many other functionalities also harmonised data for the theme Land use (III.4, specifically data for planned land use) faced problems in the tender that made it impossible to complete the harmonisation. The Ministry of Health is active in the issue of HVD, but not in INSPIRE, therefore the situation remains unchanged, even though the Ministry has become the coordinator of the theme Health and Security. After several years of implementing new way of Monitoring obligation, Czech Republic would like to raise a discussion about more effective way that would prove more precisely the real availability of data and services. The automatic approach of harvesting and later calculation of indicators is fully supported by the data providers, the only issue remaining is that it happens only day within the entire year. Accident may occur on 15th of December, like electricity cut on 15th December 2021 and all the efforts are lost. Czech-Slovak INSPIRE conference was held in Brno, Czechia on 29th-30th November 2023 and was associated with Copernicus forum (national conference for the Copernicus initiative). The conference brought two days divided by topics, each of which had its own conference day and a day only for practical workshops. Full program with presentations and videos is available at the conference website: https://inspirujmese.eu/cs/archiv-2023/. Last Czech-Slovak INSPIRE conference was held in Strbske Pleso, Slovakia on 20th-21st November 2024. Two full days were dedicated to the best practice examples not only from the INSPIRE implementation, but from geoinformation field in general including local governments, Open data and AI. Full program with presentations and videos is available at the conference website: https://inspirujmese.eu/cs/archiv-2024/

Usage of the infrastructure for spatial information

The access to the data sources is not provided only via central portals with national relevance (e.g. National INSPIRE Geoportal - https://geoportal.gov.cz or National Open data portal - https://opendata.gov.cz or geoportal of Czech Office for Surveying Mapping and Cadastre - https://geoportal.cuzk.gov.cz), but there are also many other sources. Domain specific geoportals exist and provide source geodata and services and are successfully in use mostly by the domain users. List of these geoportals is available via National INSPIRE geoportal at: https://geoportal.gov.cz/web/guest/other-portals Development of portals is still ongoing:

Data Sharing Arrangements

CENIA in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior supports the data providers in technical aspects of opening their spatial data. Many data providers publish their INSPIRE data also in the National Open Data Catalogue: (https://opendata.gov.cz/). The ČÚZK caused a great revolution when, in 2023, it made the entire Fundamental Base of Geographic Data of the Czech Republic available as open data. In future it would be useful to harmonise the way of publication of data at INSPIRE geoportal and at https://data.europa.eu/en. Outdated data sets and wrong resource catalogues have been found. Czech Republic expects relevant DGs coordinating the data flow.

Costs and Benefits

Missing founds for finalisation of the harmonisation were discussed in 2023 with the Ministry of the Finance. The ministry has promised to assess the needs for new founds and personnel during the negotiations about the budget for upcoming years. This reassurance supported the smooth legislative process and a common agreement before presenting the amendment of the “INSPIRE law” (law 123/1998 Coll. on access to environmental information) to the government. Benefits have not been financially quantified; however, among major benefits are: