The minister announced a competition for the director of the heritage institute

Prague - Minister of Culture Václav Jehlička (KDU-ČSL) announced a selection process for the general director of the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ). The application deadline is October 31. CTK was informed of this by the ministry spokesperson Jan Cieslar. The current director of NPÚ, Pavel Jerie, offered his resignation to the minister effective November 1 back in June.
    "The reason is the impossibility of bringing the institute together and making organizational changes; it keeps getting delayed. It was said that it would be after the completion of the audit," Jerie told CTK at that time. The director offered his position, according to his words, with sufficient foresight.
    Jerie proposed a change to the NPÚ statute last year, which would allow for the reorganization of the institute - it is sometimes criticized as a "monolith" with many employees, which has reserves precisely in work organization. However, the founder, namely the ministry, only signed the new statute at the end of September 2007, but by then had already commissioned a comprehensive external process audit and suspended preparation for reorganization.
    No reorganization was to be prepared at NPÚ until the audit was completed. It took place over the winter, and the ministry allocated 1.5 million crowns for it, with its results available since February. However, they are confidential; Jerie has known them since the end of April but is not allowed to disclose them. They have already been obtained by the members of the parliamentary control committee, for example.
    The audit summarizes information about the NPÚ's management from its annual reports, the latest one being from 2006 - therefore it does not provide current economic data for 2007. It suggests three variants for organizing the institute - for example, the possibility of managing all castles and chateaus under the NPÚ from Prague, or potentially separating the management of state castles and chateaus from the professional activities of the NPÚ.
    In the upcoming new cultural policy, the Minister of Culture is considering that his ministry could take over tourism, which is currently under the responsibility of the Ministry for Regional Development. Jehlička hopes that such a move would improve coordination in promoting monuments, which he believes are one of the biggest attractions for foreign tourists. The minister wants his ministry to have more decision-making power regarding the financing of the tourism sector.
    The most significant monuments, a hundred castles and chateaus, are managed by the state precisely through the NPÚ. The possibility of creating a special organization or agency to manage these state-owned monuments has been discussed for some time. However, some experts are concerned that removing castles and chateaus from NPÚ's management will lead to a decline in their care quality or even to their removal from state ownership.