Towards more effective use of data: planned amendments to the Law on the Structure of State Administration in Latvia

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​published on 21 October 2025 | reading time approx. 3 minutes

​On June 18, 2025, Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs exercised his right to legislative initiative by submitting a draft law entitled "Amendment to the Law on the Structure of State Administration" (“Grozījums Valsts pārvaldes iekārtas likumā”) to the Presidium of the Parliament (Saeima). According to the proposed amendments, the number of purposes for data processing would be expanded, and a single state institution would be designated to be responsible for the processing and integrating of information contained in state information systems.

Currently, the Latvian state administration has approximately 700 state information systems at its disposal. Data exchange between institutions takes place on a request basis, with one institution contacting another relevant institution with a request to provide information. In this regard, approximately 347 information exchange agreements have been established for the exchange of information between public administration institutions. While cooperation between institutions regarding data usage is considered good, in some cases citizens must manually transfer information between institutions and resubmit information that has already been submitted once even now. Therefore, it would be effective to introduce changes to the regulations to ensure the possibility of reusing existing data.

These amendments propose that the Central Statistical Bureau should be responsible for processing and linking information between state information systems. Accordingly, under the draft law, institutions that are the data controllers of the relevant state information systems would be obliged to transfer information to the Central Statistical Bureau for further processing.

The amendments to the law also propose to define new purposes for the use of data, i.e., the information could be used not only for the purposes for which it was collected, but also to: 

1. plan national and regional policies and develop impact assessments, identify and analyze preventive risks in the sector; 
2. provide services and improve their availability, as well as to improve their quality and analyze their effectiveness; 
3. inform the public and implement research and innovation projects. The proposed amendments do not apply or change the way in which sensitive data, such as health and criminal records, are processed.

It is also important to note that the activities of the Central Statistical Bureau in this regard would be supervised by the State Data Inspectorate, which would conduct an audit of personal data processing at least once every three years. Therefore, at present, there is no substantiated method to verify or ascertain whether the indicated purposes will be fulfilled through the processing of this data, and it seems that only time will reveal whether the stated objectives can truly be fulfilled through the processing of this data. Nevertheless, this uncertainty does not preclude the individual from exercising their data subject rights, particularly in cases where there are suspicions of non-compliant data processing by state authorities.​