Central Register of Entrepreneurs – Trade Register Information System

• Client: Ministry of Informatics of the Czech Republic, Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic
• Date: 2004 to now
• Place: Czech Republic
• Implementing entity: ICZ a.s.

The Trade Register Information System was established as a pilot project of the former Ministry of Informatics of the Czech Republic in methodological cooperation with the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic. The project builds on the results of the Regional Data Network project in Třebíč. The Trade Register Information System creates conditions to ensure the uniform performance of state administration in trade licencing and the maintenance of the Trade Register at all levels of trade licence offices. The Trade Register Information System also supports the development of eGovernment in the Czech Republic by linking many different Czech public administration information systems, including the possibility of interconnection with similar registers in EU Member States.

Characterization of the customer

The users of the Trade Register Information System are the individual trade licence offices (TLO), which are an important part of public administration and which ensure the exercise of public administration in trade licensing. At present, there are 242 offices at different levels of public administration, namely 205 municipal offices, 14 regional offices, and 22 authorized offices of the city districts of Prague and the Trade Licence Office of the Czech Republic, whose competence is exercised, within the meaning of the Competence Act, by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic (MoIT).

Ensuring all the procedural matters in trade licensing falls within the competence of the TLOs. This means registering and keeping records of economic entities doing business under the Trade Licensing Act, issuing extracts from the Trade Register (TR), inspecting activities, the management of administrative procedures, etc. The Trade Licensing Act is a statutory standard under which the vast majority (about 90%) of entrepreneurial activities is implemented, by both natural and legal persons.

Through the system of trade licence offices, the Ministry of Industry and Trade is obliged through Act No 570/1991, on Trade Licence Offices, to keep a Central Register of Entrepreneurs who carry on business under the Trade Licensing Act. This register is kept in the form of the Trade Register Information System (TRIS).

Main goals of the TRIS project

• Unification and consolidation of the data base, securing the operation of the Central Register of Entrepreneurs and the Trade Register in accordance with the Trade Licensing Act. This goal will lead to the refinement of the data base for the TRIS as an important public administration (PA) register, from which all other PA registers will be able to draw valid and verified data and therefore prepare a high-quality data base in the field of business under the Trade Licensing Act in the Czech Republic for future connection to similar EU registers.
• Unification of administrative procedures and processes related to the application of the Trade Offices Act and the Trade Licensing Act, and subsequent technical support. This goal contributes to the unification of procedures relating to the management of the TR and the administrative processes related to the exercise of state administration in business activities conducted under trade licences. This unification will contribute towards improved awareness by economic entities in business and is the basis for the successful implementation of follow-up government projects.
• Linking to other public administration information systems to reduce the circulation of documents and people where existing valid data is already available, and obtaining current and valid information directly from the PA source registers (population register, trade register, address system, the criminal records) applicable directly for work in the system. At the same time, another goal of this connection is to share information from the TRIS with other PA registers as per the statutory obligation of the TLOs or for their own use, depending on the possibilities provided by the Trade Licensing Act or related Acts.
• Providing the public with information through a web interface. The implementation of this objective will lead to the fulfilment of Act No 365/2000 on PAIS. As a result, current and validated information on economic entities in the Czech Republic is provided to citizens engaged in business, but also to those who are not, thereby opening up and increasing the transparency of the business environment in relation to other citizens, and also supporting business in the Czech Republic.
• Providing information to authorized users beyond the trade licencing offices system. By implementing this objective, the efficiency of public administration is increased, as stated in the programme objectives of the Czech government, because in this way authorized employees of, for example, the Czech Police and the Czech Trade Inspection Authority, can themselves prepare lists of business premises of economic entities based on relevant and valid data provided directly from the TRIS, or view records in the TR (both its public and non-public parts).

Characteristics of the Trade Register Information System

The TRIS is a process-oriented, centralized information system in which individual cases are processed by trade licence offices using an internal WorkFlow. This supports the efforts of the MoIT to fundamentally unify the exercise of the statutory administrative activities of the TLO.

The TRIS operates under a unified data base which contains on the one hand all the data from the TR, and on the other all necessary information for the management of the administrative work related to the TRIS itself.

The TRIS is operated in a hosting centre where all the necessary HW and network infrastructure is located. All the data and functions of the individual applications required for their administration are concentrated in the TRIS centre. The TRIS centre is divided into two interconnected independent sites to ensure high security and availability. Each of the two sites provides a complete range of services both for the internal needs of the trade licence offices system and for interconnection with other public administration information servers, as well as for the provision of information to the public.

The end-user devices operated by the users – trade licence office officials – are standard PCs with Windows or Linux operating systems and smart card readers. The user interface is a standard web browser. Communication between the end station and the TRIS centre is not dependent on the existence of any infrastructure designated solely for the needs of public administration; standard Internet connections at the individual offices is currently used, while the confidentiality of communication is ensured through use of the HTTPS protocol.

Individual users prove their identity when accessing the system using a certificate stored on a smart card. Each user is therefore assigned unique authorization to work with registered data and the system functions. The established authorization method contributes to ensuring that individual actions performed with the register data are demonstrable and cannot be denied.

The TRIS actively provides the data from the TR to other PAISs in accordance with the obligations stipulated by the Trade Licensing Act and, at the same time, uses the interconnection with other PAISs to obtain data from these PAISs or for online verification of data required for the operation of the TLO.

THE TRIS ACTIVELY COMMUNICATES WITH THE FOLLOWING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION INFORMATION SYSTEMS:

• The Register of Economic Entities kept by the Czech Statistical Office (allocation of identification numbers, data transfer for statistical purposes),
• The Commercial Register kept by the Ministry of Justice (documents for incorporation, and information on incorporations in the Commercial Register),
• The ADIS of the Ministry of Finance (data transfer for tax administration purposes),
• The Czech Social Security Administration (data transfer for the needs of social security administration),
• Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (data transfer for the needs of Labour Offices),
• General health insurance companies (data transfer for the needs of the central register of insured persons),
• The Data Box Information System kept by the Ministry of the Interior (transfer of data on business entities),
• The Central Population Register kept by the Ministry of the Interior (ISEO). In the ISEO, the correctness of information about persons who are entrepreneurs, responsible representatives, heads of organizational units of a company, and members of statutory bodies is verified,
• The criminal records kept by the Ministry of Justice. For entrepreneurs themselves, it is the interconnection of the TRIS and the criminal records (verification of a clean criminal record) which is important, as the entrepreneur no longer has to present an extract from the criminal records when making submissions. Such extract is requested by the relevant trade licence office official in electronic form,
• The Basic Registers Information System, through which it verifies personal identities in the Basic Register of Inhabitants, business entities in the Basic Register of Persons (companies), addresses in the Basic Register of Territorial Identification, Addresses and Real Estate and through which it records the data on economic entities registered in the Basic Register of Persons and the data on the decisions in the Basic Register of Rights and Obligations.

All the communication mentioned above is based on the principle of direct mutual communication between the central information systems. The communication technology is built on the HTTPS protocol using XML data transfer or using web services provided by other registers.

Development of the TRIS

As part of the development and extension of TRIS features, the following projects have been implemented, expanding the portfolio of services provided by the TRIS and increasing the quality of the TRIS as such:

• The Entrepreneur Electronic Filing project for the Trade Register, which allows the business community to create electronic filings through an Integrated Registration Form (IRF) on their computers and send them with electronic signatures to the central Electronic Filing Office of the Trade Register or, in case of the absence of an electronic signature, via a data box to the data box of the appropriate authority. The relevant TLO selected by the entrepreneur processes the filing and also, if possible, processes it electronically. The same application which serves the business community is also used at the trade licence office where, under a filing submitted through the Central Registration Point (CRP) and processed by the IRF application, the data from the electronic file is transmitted within the CRP to other state administration bodies (MoF, CSSA, MoLSA and the GHIC). In 2008, this project was announced as the winner of the IT Project of the Year, a competition organized by the Czech Association of Chief Information Officers (CACIO).
• The Document Records project in the TRIS and a two-way interface between the administration and the file service of the authority, allowing all documents created in the TRIS to be recorded in accordance with statutory requirements, and allowing the information and documents to be transmitted through the two-way interface both from the filing office (file service) to the TRIS, and from the TRIS to the authority’s file service for the purpose of document filing, recording and archiving.
• The Modification of the TRIS project towards the PA Basic Registers, through which communication between the TRIS and the system of basic registers of the Czech Republic and its utilization is ensured, as well as completing the Basic Register of Persons (BRP) with data on business entities recorded in the TRIS and the Basic Register of Rights and Obligations (BRRO) with data on decisions issued by the TLO that change the data recorded in the BRP.

Basic project specifications

Name of the project: Central Register of Entrepreneurs – Trade Register Information System

Client: Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic

Scope of the project:

• 227 municipal TLOs or TLOs of the Prague city districts, 14 regional TLOs, 1 TLO of the Czech Republic
• The TRIS is used by approximately 2,100 active users daily
• There are approximately 2.2 million economic entities and approximately 3 million trade licenses registered in the TRIS
• About 1.05 million filings by business entities, other public administration bodies and filings from its own activity are processed in the TRIS by the individual TLOs each year
• About 2.8 million documents of different classes are generated each year in the TRIS under the processed reports