Commentary
International Relations
Trump’s Second Term a Crossroads for Central Europe – COMMENTARY
6 November 2024
14 January 2021
Practices under the pandemic simply show that Central European states are not equipped with the technology, legal framework and willingness of state employees to move closer to the digital economy.
There was a strange bunch of people waiting for Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš that day in the middle of March in front of the government’s office in the centre of Prague.
They were a couple of successful Czech IT businessmen who came to offer help to the Czech state, which was at the beginning of what is now a long fight with the pandemic.
The prime minister accepted the help and this group, which created the Covid19CZ team, cooperated with some state agencies. Together, they would develop telephone support, an information line, and create a contact network among regional offices of state sanitary agency which would, later on, form a backbone of so-called ‘smart quarantine’ – a system to track people who were possible transmitters of the disease.