Six Questions Every Public Office Should Ask a Camera System Supplier

The day after handover, every camera system looks the same. The differences only show when the police need footage and the office doesn't have it. I've written down six questions that expose a weak supplier before you sign the contract.

Jozef Krivaček · 7/19/2026 · 6 min read

Picture an ordinary Monday morning at a public office. Over the weekend, someone tried to force the back entrance. The police arrive to file a report and ask for the footage from the camera above the door. That is the moment everyone discovers the recording server from 2019 has been down for three months. The camera above the door looks perfectly fine — there is just no recording behind it. And the company that once delivered the system no longer picks up the phone.

In fifteen years in this business, we have seen dozens of situations like this one. Never at handover — always a few years later. On the day the acceptance protocol is signed, every delivery looks identical: cameras on the walls, a picture on the monitor, the invoice paid. The difference between suppliers only shows when something fails.

So this article won't be about megapixels. I've written down six questions that expose the differences between bidders while the tender is still running, when something can still be done about it. Put them to every bidder. Including us.

1. How many cameras do you operate right now, and for whom?

Not how many you have delivered. How many you service today.

A delivery reference only proves that a company once managed to win a tender and mount some boxes. A reference for years of operation proves its systems keep running and the client voluntarily keeps them around. The second kind is rare.

Our answer to this question: over 1,700 cameras in live operation. More than 400 cameras in the streets of Bratislava, which we have been servicing for a third year, and 1,300 cameras in the vehicles of the city transport company, installed during the pandemic. During that installation we went through more than a hundred metal drill bits, by the way. You won't find that detail in a reference table, but it says more about the scale than the word "complex" ever will.

2. Who will physically install and service the system — your people, or someone we haven't met yet?

Camera systems that monitor the movement of persons fall under the Slovak private security act. Only a holder of a technical service licence may design, install, and service them. The first thing to request from any bidder is the number of that licence. Ours is PT 003619.

The second thing is whether the company works with its own people. A chain of subcontractors means that when something breaks, you wait while the general contractor orders a local firm, and that firm finds a slot in its calendar. We install and service with our own technicians — employed by us, driving our vehicles, vouched for by us. We also hold six ISO certificates, including information security (ISO/IEC 27001) and IT service management (ISO/IEC 20000-1), plus liability insurance. In serious tenders these are not a bonus, they are conditions of participation. A bidder who doesn't have them in-house borrows them for the tender. And borrowed capacity tends to vanish once the contract is signed.

Our own branded fleet — the field team sets out directly from three branches across Slovakia.

3. Where does the technician set out from when the system fails on a Friday afternoon?

A camera on an office building in Michalovce cannot be fixed from an office in Bratislava. The distance of the nearest technician is part of any serious answer about SLAs.

We run three branches: Bratislava, Žilina, and Michalovce. Each has technicians with their own service vehicles, which is how we keep response to a critical failure within four hours anywhere in Slovakia. That same footprint is what let us finish installing 1,300 cameras on schedule at a time when pandemic restrictions changed week to week — teams from three regions worked in parallel and covered for each other.

4. What will you do with what we already have?

You rarely start from scratch. A typical office has cameras from two or three phases: something bought ten years ago, something added by a different supplier, brands that don't match, and no documentation for the oldest part.

"We'll replace everything with our brand" is the most expensive sentence in this industry. A good supplier maps the existing system first and replaces only what has genuinely reached the end of its life. In Bratislava we keep over 400 cameras from multiple manufacturers and generations in a single service regime this way — so the city doesn't pay three service contracts to three companies based on who delivered what and when.

5. Where does the footage end up, and who can access it?

Camera footage from an office is personal data of your employees and visitors, and during an inspection it is you, the controller, who answers for it — not the supplier. So ask specifically: Where is the data physically stored? Who exactly can access it, and how is that logged? After how long is footage deleted, and why that long?

"You'll configure that later" is not an answer. Retention periods, access rights, and access auditing belong in the system design, not in your IT administrator's homework. We keep data exclusively in the EU or directly on your infrastructure, and analytics runs on our own servers — not in a third-party cloud beyond the reach of your contract.

6. What do we get from the cameras besides footage?

A few years ago, a camera system was an archive someone opened once a month. Today it is a sensor. The same camera that watches the entrance can count vehicles in the car park in front of the building, track occupancy of a park-and-ride site, or support the objective liability agenda — from detecting an offence to a pre-prepared fine, as we described in our series on speed cameras.

The difference between a camera that merely records and a camera that gives the office usable numbers is often just software on top of hardware you already own. In Bratislava, Park & Ride analytics runs on top of the city's cameras on our KALM:IT platform.

Why I'm writing this

I'll admit it freely: I'm writing this partly because we have good answers to all six questions, and it helps us in tenders when someone asks them. But mostly because a badly bought camera system is paid for with public money and is supposed to serve for years. Feel free to copy the questions into your tender preparation — even if you never contact us, they will sort your bids.

And if you are preparing a camera project right now — a new system, an extension, or looking for someone to take over the existing one — write to us.