The COVID-19 Crisis and State Administration Authorities

In this article, we present findings of a systematic review and qualitative analysis of legal documents adopted by national bodies in Czechia in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our goal was to fill the gap in existing research that focused mainly on restrictive and coercive measures that have impacted the society as a whole until now and paid less attention to changes expected in public administration by laws adopted during the pandemic. Our research showed that the executive branch took the leading role in solving the COVID-19 crisis in Czechia, as in other countries. However, the difference can be seen in that the key executive organs that shaped the organization of state administration were the government and the Ministry of Health, which participated in creating documents focused on health protection. The secondary law was used as the key format for the regulation of issues related to the functioning of the state administration and specifically to the reduction of personal contacts and service provision, ensuring protective equipment and the use of electronic communication channels needed for work from home (for which a new, not yet existing regulation was created). Moreover, the systematic review of the national legal documents showed that while the elements “People” and “Processes” were significantly affected by them, the element “Technology” was minimally affected, even though the level of digitalisation in Czechia has been below the average of EU countries in recent years. The prevalence of work from home was carried out both by the relaxation of existing administrative processes and by extensions of deadlines for various administrative tasks.