Act No. 300/2008 Coll. on Electronic Communication, Personal Numbers and Authorized Conversion of Documents (the “Act”) will come into force on 1 July 2009; the Act introduces major changes in the method used for communicating with authorities.

The changes introduced by the Act include particularly the following:

• in the period from July to September 2009, all legal entities and other enumerated entities will have an obligatory data box established; subsequently, these entities will receive the necessary information needed to access their data boxes by post;
• public authorities will then communicate with  the above entities exclusively via the data box;
• the receipt of a document will occur when the addressee of the document logs into the data box; the legal fiction of receipt of an electronic data message arises on the tenth day from the delivery of the message to the addressee’s data box.

Currently, a number of legal regulations already provide for electronic communication by public authorities:

• e.g. the Rules of Administrative Procedure stipulate that petitions and other documents may be submitted in an electronic form via electronic mail rooms; the documents must contain guaranteed electronic signatures;
• the Civil Code also contains certain general provisions regulating legal acts undertaken by electronic means;
• both the Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of Criminal Procedure allow for electronic submissions of documents;
• electronic communication is further provided for by the Public Administration Information Systems Act; based on this act, the “transaction section” of the public administration portal (www.portal.gov.cz) allowing for the delivery of electronic data messages (electronic submission of documents) was launched in 2005;
• in the area of taxes, the scope of electronic communication has steadily expanded resulting in the launch of a “Tax Portal” (www.eds.mfcr.cz) that serves for communicating with the tax administration and for acquiring tax proceeding information.

The legal regulations governing electronic communication and transactions are nevertheless quite fragmented; the new Act on Electronic Communication, Personal Numbers and Authorized Conversion of Documents aims at integrating the legislation and unifying the methods of delivery of electronic documents.
 
The Act introduces the concept of a “data box”, i.e. an electronic storing place to be used for the delivery of documents by public administration authorities and other selected legal entities and for the performance of acts vis-à-vis these entities – i.e. submissions of petitions and other documents to any authority via the data box will also be possible.

All legal acts executed via the electronic data desk will have the same effects as standard acts executed in writing and containing a signature.

Important notice: the use of data boxes will be obligatory for legal entities registered in the Commercial Register, legal entities established by special statute, business organizational units of foreign legal entities registered in the Commercial Register, and as from 2012 also for attorneys, tax advisors, insolvency trustees, notaries and court executors.

Upon the expiry of a transitory period, the above entities will no longer accept deliveries by standard delivery services (e.g. post, etc.); the only deliveries accepted by the obliged entities will be exclusively via data boxes that will be established for them by the Ministry of Interior Affairs free of charge within 90 days from the effect of the Act. Upon request, the Ministry will also establish data boxes for natural persons and individual private entrepreneurs.

The use of data boxes will be:

• obligatory for public authorities communicating with entities that have data boxes established by operation of law and with natural persons that have data boxes established upon their request;
• voluntary for legal entities and natural persons communicating with public authorities;
• not allowed for communication between natural persons and legal entities.

If a natural person or legal entity has a data box established, the public authority shall be obliged to deliver documents to the data box in an electronic form.

While multiple persons may have access to a single data box, not all of them may have access to all electronic data messages in that particular data box – e.g. if a data message is strictly private and confidential, intended for the addressee only, other authorized persons will not have access to that message.

In order to access the data box information system, the users will have to acquire the necessary access information (user name and password). The following general rule applies: single entity - single data box. Consequently, the data box information system is constructed in a way that allows each entity to use different access ways to different data boxes established for that entity. An individual entrepreneur may e.g. have two data boxes established with two access ways, one as a natural person and the second one as an entrepreneur.

A notification of delivery of an electronic data message to an addressee shall be sent by the Ministry to the electronic address determined by the addressee. The receipt of a document delivered to the data box shall occur at the moment when a person authorized to access the document logs into the data box using its user name and password (access information). If the authorized person does not log in within 10 days from the delivery of the document to the data box, the document shall be considered received on the last day of this period, unless special regulation excludes substitute receipt.

The content of electronic messages shall be protected so that only an authorized person can read them. The messages will not have to contain electronic signatures; the login to the system will substitute electronic signatures for communication with public authorities (if, however, a single document requires signatures of multiple persons pursuant to the applicable legal regulation, the electronic data message will have to be electronically signed). In order to increase reliability and credibility, all dispatched messages will contain a qualified time stamp.

The Act further implements the concept of authorized conversion of documents, i.e. an act that constitutes full transfer of a written paper document to an electronic data message document and vice versa. An authentication clause shall be attached to the output of such conversion; as a result, the converted document will have the same legal effects as a certified copy of the original document.

Jana Felixová