The Geodesy Authority will provide open data, the government agrees

Prague - The Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre will provide database data or state maps free of charge as open data. Limited access to them will only be due to the protection of critical infrastructure according to the crisis law. The change is introduced by an amendment to the surveying law, which was approved today by the cabinet of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO). The amendment also proposes that the results of surveying activities carried out by the cadastral offices should not be verified by private surveying engineers, but by the cadastral offices themselves.

According to the explanatory memorandum to the law, the most frequently used data produced by the office will be available free of charge. "A substantial part of the geospatial information managed by the surveying office is the basis for the activities of various state administration bodies and local self-governments, and at the same time it is used by the private sector," stated the Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre in the explanatory memorandum to the amendment.

Thus, the state will lose five million crowns annually, which, according to surveyors, will be compensated by the benefits. These benefits are expected to be obtained by the state, for example, through the taxation of activities by private individuals who use geospatial data. The office will also not have to manage this data separately for other offices.

From now on, all public authority bodies will have to provide geographical data to the office, while all these institutions will have free access to them. "The proposed solution is expected to remove barriers and create conditions for further development of geographically oriented information systems in public administration," added the office.

The current situation, where surveyors as private individuals review the results of surveying activities of the cadastral offices, is considered inadequate by the office. "The control and declaration of compliance with the accuracy and formalities of the results of surveying activities carried out by public authority bodies through verification performed by an employee of a public authority who is a natural person with official authorization is thus in contradiction with the legal responsibility of the public authority for the correctness of its activities, as other persons cannot bear this responsibility for it, and in this sense it is also superfluous," the office added.