Insights

In this review, I want to share a seemingly rather simple situation - there are cases where three legal entities are given one real estate code and one of them needs to receive the names, surnames or other personal data of the co-owners[1]. Information on co-owners must be provided to the applicant by the State Enterprise Centre of Registers (hereinafter - CR). To our company’s initial request for the above data, CR replied that it did not have the technical capacity to provide such basic information. However, after a month and a half of correspondence with various CR divisions, we received a response that there is a possibility to generate the data we requested for an additional fee, which is not mentioned in the CR price list.

CR[2] is currently under the Ministry of Economy and Innovation. CR was previously owned by the Ministry of Transport and Communications, before that, it was at the disposal of the Ministry of Justice.

It would seem that for such a solid company, the technical capabilities of information technology should be unlimited, unfortunately, de facto - it is the technical barriers that prevent CR from providing customers with targeted information that complies with the regulation of personal data protection.

Raimda auditas UAB is located in a convenient place - in the city centre. Understandably, in the heart of the city, where there is particularly heavy traffic, every centimetre is important. In order to mark the parking place belonging to the company with the road sign “Reserved parking place”, we applied to the Road Police Board of the Kaunas Count Chief Police Commissariat.

The Road Police provided us with a detailed answer as to what documents are required to mark the relevant parking space with the “Reserved parking space” sign. One of the required documents was the written consent of the co-owners of the parking space to install such a sign. Official information on the co-owners of the parking place is provided by CR, which is why we have contacted this institution to provide the above information.

CR’s response was very surprising because instead of information about the two co-owners of the parking space, who were given the same unique code as Raimda auditas UAB, we received a 20-page response, which revealed a lot of information not related to the request.

THE ANSWER PROVIDED INFORMATION WITH THE PERSONAL CODES AND DATE OF ACQUISITION OF THE PROPERTY OF ALL APARTMENT OWNERS REGISTERED AT THE SAME ADDRESS!

We were very unpleasantly surprised by this response because making a request for information about the two co-owners of the parking space we received excess information that was completely unrelated to our request.

When we asked CR why we were given redundant, voluminous information that was completely unrelated to our request, we received an initial response - CR has no technical capability to provide information about co-owners by unique code, only by address.

In this almost comical situation, the question remains open - what about the provisions of the GDPR? Is such posting of personal data not a breach of the regulations? Does this practice of a public body with regard to personal data does not raise an issue with the authorities supervising the provisions of the GDPR?

Another question - should Raimda auditas UAB in such a case submit to the Road Police all 20 (twenty) sheets received from CR, or, nevertheless, be obliged to arbitrarily adjust the official information provided by CR in order not to violate the provisions of GDPR?

In mid-February, a month and a half after our initial inquiry, we received a CR’s offer to provide us with the specific service we requested. This service - preparation of a non-standard volume report - according to CR, is non-standardized, therefore fees applied to it are non-standard as well. Information about the two co-owners of the parking space can be programmed, and the cost of a programming hour is 50 euros.

It is interesting that on the CR website https://www.registrucentras.lt/p/1321 the service fees range from a few cents to a few euros. Meanwhile, the programming service that CR is ready to provide to Raimda auditas UAB is priced at 50 EUR/hour. It is also strange that the information provided in the e-mail received in February contradicts the information provided so far. We share some interesting accents of communication with CR:

• CR customer service employees stated in writing and orally that there is no technical capability of providing this type of service (reporting on a unique code)
• We asked several times by telephone about the possibility of compiling a report - all the time CR employees informed that such a possibility is not available
• After submitting a written request and receiving a call from CR employees regarding the request, we received the same answer - CR does not have the capability to generate a non-standard scope report
• In mid-February, the CR‘s Chief Data Analyst responded that the report could be generated by paying a solid amount for programming.

Do CR customer service employees, in fact, have no competence, as if they had agreed to repeat that the report we requested could not be drawn up? This question remains open. Only after getting in contact with the CR‘s Legal Department and the Press Department “could not” changed to “possible”. Surprisingly, such a seemingly elementary service is treated as non-standard in these times of the information technology boom. The only conclusion is that information technologies continue to be difficult to find in public institutions.

2^nd March 2021
Daiva Žumbakienė

In the attachments:

1. Inquiry submitted by Raimda auditas UAB to Centre of Registers on 27 December 2020.

[1] The solution to the situation is analogous when a unique code is assigned to several natural persons

[2] https://www.registrucentras.lt/naujienos/index.php?mod=news&act=view&id=40415