Supreme Audit Office of the Slovak Republic

Condition and electronic justice - findings and recommendations (November 2020)

Summary

The qualitative and quantitative assessment of the state of justice is not close to the defined national goals of the Slovak Republic or the European averages. Selected indicators of this evaluation are also used in some national projects by the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic. Although the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic implemented reforms in the previous period related to entrepreneurs, i. e. introduced electronic delivery, electronic court file or register of clauses, the quality of these reforms is insufficient for the state and users due to their incompleteness, unavailability or quality of electronic services.

The long-awaited improvement in the services of the Business Register, which was ahead of its time at the time of deployment on the internet, is still being postponed due to the prolongation of public procurement. The set deadlines for the deployment of a new version of the Business Register, the expansion of registrants or the shortening of the registration time in the Business Register were thus not met. Also related to the Business register is the project of registration of end-users of benefits, which disproportionately overwhelmed the departments of the Business Register that were unable to deal with a large number of ideas in this area by the deadline (30 June 2020). For this reason, there was also an extension of the deadlines that the registry courts needed to register companies in the Business Register, even though the law guarantees entrepreneurs registration within two working days. The Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic should have evaluated the risks and alternative solutions so that the current situation did not occur.

The electronic services are also affected by the fact that the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic did not evaluate the currently deployed services over time from the point of view of user suitability. In addition, it lacks the personnel capacity to implement the currently planned projects.

The full text of the analysis about this issue in Slovak language is available here.