The ministry has published the audit of the heritage institute

Prague - The Ministry of Culture has published a long-secret audit of the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ). It posted the three-hundred-page document on its website on Tuesday, the same day Minister Václav Jehlička appointed a new director of NPÚ, Naděžda Goryczková. The audit states that NPÚ is personnel unstable, lacking, for instance, a tourism department, the ecclesiastical heritage department is not functioning, and state heritage care is stagnant.
However, some shortcomings are generally attributable to the system of state heritage care in the Czech Republic and cannot be blamed solely on NPÚ. For example, there is the long-criticized so-called dual system of heritage care, where the expertise falls under NPÚ, but the executive component is self-governing. The audit also notes that more people should work at the institute - in contrast to some criticism regarding the large number of its employees. It recommends aligning the quality of heritage care in individual regions, whose levels are reportedly unbalanced.
The result of the audit is several options for its further functioning - some advise retaining NPÚ as a single institution while changing its legal form, which would allow further development primarily in the part of the institute that manages heritage sites. Three variants propose dividing NPÚ into two institutions - for expert activity and for management of properties, and two variants suggest dividing NPÚ into more organizations.
NPÚ spokesman Zdeněk Musil told ČTK today that the new director is just becoming acquainted with the audit. The ministry has had the results of the audit since February. It previously did not want to publish them, referring to the need to make changes first as recommended by the audit. In recent days, it stated that it wanted to present the audit to the new management first. Today, it also did not want to comment on the audit results, but had previously indicated that it is precisely working on addressing the discrepancies in the management of castles and chateaus or differing approaches to expert issues in individual regions.
The new director replaced Pavel Jerie, who offered his position to the minister back in June; at that time, he already knew the results of the audit, but claimed he did not resign because of them. The reason, according to him, at that time was the inability to make organizational changes - he proposed a change to the statute, but the ministry only approved it at the time of the audit's commissioning; they wanted to wait for reorganization until after the audit. The audit was conducted by KPMG for 1.5 million crowns.
NPÚ was established in 2003 when originally separate regional heritage care institutes were merged. Since then, it has been led by its seventh director. "At that time, it was a negative response from the state to the demand from the regions to complete the reform of public administration in the field of heritage care by transferring regional institutes to the regions. Unfortunately, the organization still bears the mark of the time of its origin, and its establishment in 2003 actually ended halfway," said MK spokesman Jan Cieslar earlier to ČTK.
The audit established eight key processes that fulfill the basic purpose of NPÚ. In all lines, it found shortcomings - for instance, it mentions the low financial valuation of professional staff, which is not solely dependent on the institute's management, or the lack of funds for the maintenance of properties managed by NPÚ, namely state castles and chateaus.