The AmCham Board discussed 2024 priorities with US Ambassador Bijan Sabet and his political, economic and commercial team on January 22nd. Both sides agreed to address climate change and digitization, particularly cybersecurity, in the coming year.

“Brno has all the ingredients an economy needs to be innovative.” AmCham Vice-President Ondřej Krajíček of Y Soft posited to sum up our recent discussion with the author of The Country for the Future vision, Karel Havlíček, Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Parliament of the Czech Republic. “What we need now is the confidence to bet on our abilities and a higher commitment to cooperate with each other to achieve our goals.”

Anticipated completion of the European NIS2 Directive's integration into Czech law is set for late 2024, facilitated by the new Czech Cybersecurity Act (CSA) and associated decrees. This legislative shift will impact an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 Czech companies, formerly exempt from cybersecurity regulations, necessitating the adoption of measures for compliance. Since the CSA is a complex legal regulation, it is advisable to engage a spectrum of experts, extending beyond IT to include legal and compliance professionals, in this transformative process.

The spectrum of potentially affected companies generally encompasses medium to large enterprises across 60 services and almost 20 sectors. These services span from ICT and digital services providers to traditional sectors such as energy, transport, healthcare, water supply, automotive and food processing.

The Citi Foundation issued a Request for Proposals for its latest Global Innovation Challenge, a funding model to help scale the impact of nonprofits around the world that are tackling some of society’s most pressing issues. The 2024 Global Innovation Challenge will provide a collective $25 million in catalytic funding to 50 community organizations working in novel ways to address homelessness.