Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 14th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview I. Working Group on Politico-Administrative Relations Author(s) Martina Jalovecka Office of the Government of the Czech Republic Prague 1 Czech Republic Title Political and administrative roles of the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic in the policy-making process File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract The Office of the Government of the Czech Republic (GO) has acquired its current structure and statute in the process of institutions’ building and shaping of politico-administrative relations in the early 90´s after the split of Czechoslovak federation and emergence of two new separate states. Its traditional position and relations with other central authorities are laid down in the basic Act on competencies, but actual tasks and requirements show different understanding of its role. One point of view reduces its role only to administrative service to the Government, the second one sees GO as the centre of governance with strong coordination power. In addition to that, the GO faces new challenges, namely in relation to EU membership. The current structure of GO indicates both points of view – there are lots of administrative units ensuring mainly a day-to-day agenda for weekly Government sessions and, on the other hand, there is a number of Government committees and councils which usually have an advisory role in the decision-making process and which are responsible for various horizontal agendas such as sustainable development, human rights, Roma community affairs, minorities, business environment simplification etc. Moreover, another tendency can be observed consisting of replacing a cross-cutting agenda from a specific sectoral Ministries to GO-cz, e.g. regulatory reform. The National case study will analyse changes in the role of GO in the process of preparation and implementation of the Government policies.
