The Ministry of Culture distributed more than CZK 3 billion in subsidies. However, the complex system complicates the work of applicants and the Ministry itself
PRESS RELEASE ON AUDIT NO 23/15 – 1 July 2024
The Supreme Audit Office (SAO) focused on how the Ministry of Culture (MoC) spent funds to support cultural activities between 2019 and 2022. During these years, the Ministry distributed CZK 3.2 billion in more than 9,300 projects. The auditors found numerous shortcomings - from unclear benefits of the support, to a very unclear and complicated system of providing subsidies, to the failure to implement measures and tasks imposed by the Government of the Czech Republic. Often these are the problems that the SAO already found during audits in 2014 and 2018.
The system of distributing subsidies for cultural activities was inefficient and complicated, and thus unnecessarily burdened both the MoC and the applicants for subsidies. In practice, this led, for example, to applicants having to submit the same documents several times for each individual application. On the part of the MoC, various activities related to the administration of applications - for example, checking the documents submitted - were duplicated.
The administration of support for cultural activities was challenging for two reasons in particular - the inconsistent procedure of the individual departments of the MoC and the lack of a unified information system for the administration of cultural activities. It was this IT system, which could eliminate duplication of activities and the need to repeatedly submit the same documents, that the MoC was trying to put into practice from 2015 to 2020. Despite spending more than CZK 4.5 million on it, the project was terminated in 2020 without any results. Not only is this an ineffective investment, but it also continues a situation where the administration of subsidies is still mainly in paper form.
Auditors found further shortcomings in the subsidy calls issued by the MoC. In those cases, essential information was missing. For example, in 23 of the 24 calls audited, the Ministry did not provide full information on the procedure for removing defects in applications for subsidies, the procedure for completing applications, etc. This further negatively affected the clarity and efficiency of the whole system of support for cultural activities.
The SAO also found that the MoC did not fulfil a number of measures and tasks set by the Government of the Czech Republic. In addition to computerising the administration and provision of subsidies, it should have formulated the objectives it wanted to achieve by distributing money for cultural activities and should have evaluated their fulfilment. However, the Ministry has not set any specific and measurable objectives since 2015. Everything remained with general objectives, which the MoC evaluated only formally.
In sum, it can be said that the MoC has not remedied most of the shortcomings identified by the SAO in previous similarly focused audits in 2014 and 2018. In one case, the situation even worsened. In the 2018 audit, the SAO highlighted the insufficient number of public administration controls. Subsequently, from 2019, the MoC set up a Control Department, the main focus of which was to carry out these controls. However, the number of controls has further decreased.
Communication Department
Supreme Audit Office