The Geodesy Office will probably provide state maps for free as open data

Prague - The Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre, which manages state maps and database information, will likely provide this information for free as open data. Limited access to them will only be due to the protection of critical infrastructure under the crisis law. The change will come from a government amendment to the surveying law approved by the Senate today. The proposal, which will be submitted to the president for review, will also legalize the establishment of a professional Czech Chamber of Surveyors. The Chamber will grant authorizations for the verification of construction plans or state maps.

The Chamber of Surveyors will grant authorization for the verification of results of surveying activities used for the management of the cadastre of real estate, especially geometric plans or documentation for delineating property boundaries, activities used in construction, and for state maps. It will award the title of "authorized surveying engineer".

According to the proposal, surveyors with at least five years of practice will obtain authorization after passing an exam, and the Chamber would register them in the registry of authorized surveying engineers. The Chamber, based in Prague, will be led according to the proposal by a board elected by its assembly, and it will have a supervisory and authorization council. For disciplinary offenses, the Chamber could impose fines up to 50,000 crowns or revoke authorization.

The establishment of the Chamber was initiated by the Association of Entrepreneurs in Geomatics with the support of the Czech Chamber of Architects, the Directorate of Roads and Motorways of the Czech Republic, and the Railway Administration. The creation of the new professional organization was supported by the Ministry for Regional Development.

The government amendment assumes that geographic data will now be provided by all public authority bodies to the office, while all these institutions will have free access to them. "The aim is to create conditions for further development of geographically oriented information systems in public administration," the government stated in the justification of the amendment. According to the government, the Office for Surveying will lose approximately five million crowns annually. The state expects compensation from the benefits that it should have, for example, from taxing the activities of private individuals, where the use of geospatial information positively impacts their income. Costs will also be reduced as the office will not have to manage this data separately for other authorities.

The government amendment is almost identical to the proposal prepared by the cabinet of Andrej Babiš (ANO) in September 2020. However, the House of Representatives did not manage to discuss this amendment during the last electoral period.