Digitalisation of visa and passport services: instead of interconnected systems, duplicate work and manual data transcription
PRESS RELEASE ON AUDIT NO 24/26 – 5 January 2026
Consular services, which include processing visa and travel document applications, have long failed to be converted into a functional and efficient digital form. The systems of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) and the Ministry of the Interior (MoI) are insufficiently interconnected, requiring manual data transcription and the use of couriers. The deployment of new systems is not in sight – the development of new IT support worth CZK 732 million has not yet begun. This is the conclusion of an audit by the Supreme Audit Office (SAO) focused on IT support for visa and other consular services between 2016 and 2025.
In the case of the information system providing visa services, officials had to repeatedly transcribe the same data manually, print electronic documents, and send application files from abroad by commercial courier service. A typical example is the processing of long-term visa applications – an employee copies paper documents and has to enter the same data into several different systems that do not communicate with each other. Yet, the MoFA paid more than CZK 67 million to support and develop the existing IT support for visa and consular services.
A total of five new information systems were supposed to remedy the shortcomings – two for visas, two for passports, and one for other consular matters. At the time of the audit, the development of all five systems was behind schedule, and their launch in the foreseeable future cannot even be counted on.
There are a number of reasons why these systems have not yet been launched, ranging from failure to meet deadlines and unclear requirements to late preparation of legislation. This lack of legislative preparedness can be seen in the planned Integrated Foreigners Information System. The MoI identified the need to amend the Foreigners Act as early as 2012. However, it did not submit the relevant draft amendment to this Act until 11 years later. The Ministry was thus late with a key amendment to the Act, thereby jeopardising the very implementation of the project.1
The MoFA's transition to a new information system for travel documents was also unsuccessful. The Ministry paid almost CZK 127 million for the system, but by the time it was supposed to be fully operational, it had only been deployed in 12 of the 86 embassies. The MoFA therefore extended the operation of the original system, which meant it had to sign a new contract with the supplier. After concluding the contract, the total annual costs of supporting this system rose from the original CZK 1.2 million to more than CZK 15 million per year, which the SAO assessed as a consequence of dependence on a single supplier. As a result, the combination of a new contract that was many times more expensive and the simultaneous operation of two systems increased the costs of IT support for travel documents twenty-two times, to almost CZK 26 million per year. At the same time, the agenda did not change in terms of content or scope.
The described state of IT support for consular services—printing digitised data into paper files, manually rewriting or adding data, insufficient interconnection of information systems, and the like—is in direct contradiction to what the state itself has defined in terms of digitalisation.
Communication Department
Supreme Audit Office
1] The Chamber of Deputies did not discuss Parliamentary Document No 782, submitted by the government in August 2024, before the 2025 elections.