EKK Senior State Secretariat for Informatics - e-Government & ICT

Greetings (Archive)

The primary driving force behind the creation and development of electronic public administration was to improve the effectiveness of institutional operation, and subsequently the effectiveness of governance in general. E-administration, initially serving objectives of efficiency, has become a tool of economic and social policy, which, on the one hand, facilitated the development of a service provider state, and, on the other, gave rise to a set of expectations with reference to the development of modern governance operations in EU Member States.

As part of the above change in perspective, year 2007 brought a shift in emphasis as far as the e-administration policy of the European Union was concerned. The most important tasks, in addition to rationalisation, the transformation of service provision related processes and the development of pan-European services, was to provide intelligent, personalised and citizen-centred services as well as to manage citizens’ expectations associated with electronic administration.

Shifts in emphasis both in the interpretation of the role e-administration plays in the operations of modern governance and, as a result, in the e-administration policies of the European Union are observable in the EU’s strategic documents as well as its legal acts. These strategic documents and legislative pieces, in addition to designating the strategic directions for the Member States’ e-administration related developments, also define specific tasks for Member States including Hungary in certain areas.

As a typical example, one can refer to the fact that electronic administration relying on information society, as defined in the renewed Lisbon Strategy-based i2010 outlining the comprehensive public policy guidelines of the European Information Society, is viewed as an economic policy resource by several of the Community’s strategies in the context of global competition.

Similarly, with a view to improving the competitiveness of the European Union, the Services Directive, which aims at the reduction and elimination of legal and administrative barriers (Directive 2006/123/EC of the European Parliament and Council), also intends to make use of the opportunities offered by e-administration when it requires Member States to enable cross border electronic handling of service related cases by December 28, 2009.

Although the EU places particular emphasis on the development of e-administration and the service provider state, in addition to concerted strategic guidance based on national experience, the sharing of various Member States’ best practices and the standardisation of certain fields, each Member State, including Hungary, must find its own path in answering the above challenges and responding to the above tasks, for which a strategic perspective and the implementation of administration developments realised on the basis of uniform principles and within a single system are required.

Strategic perspective can rely on its background within the development of Hungarian e-governance. Within the framework of the ‘Strategy and Action Plan 2005’ for e-Governance, the development of e-administration has been implemented in the form of a strategy based on carefully considered, detailed analyses and a programme plan broken down to action plan level.

As a result of careful planning and effective implementation, Hungary’s central electronic government successfully joined the infrastructure networks of the EU; important components of the Central Electronic Service System forming the basis of the integration of e-administration, namely the Electronic Government Backbone, the Government Portal, the client portal required for electronic administration, the Government Customer Information Service, as well as the totality of services available through these platforms have been instituted.

Building on the results already achieved, the task of the next few years shall be the extension of the work – allowing for the possibilities afforded by electronic administration within a structured system – to the administration as a whole, as part of which process a uniform strategic framework is essential.

It is in this vein that the multi-tiered strategy formulation process under the coordination of the Electronic Government Centre at the Prime Minister’s Office (MeH EKK in Hungarian) began, over the course of which, following the inclusion of the institutions affected by the EU 20 service, a work programme called E-administration 2010 Strategy (hereinafter: Strategy) and Action Plan, embracing a period of approximately 4 years, was established.

The objective of the Strategy is to define a vision of future e-administration for all stakeholders to be implemented that provides a uniform framework for the detailed objectives of developments for the years to come. In addition, the document defines the most important strategic factors influencing the realisation of the objectives, encompasses all those substantive areas that institutions must take into consideration when developing their own services, as well as those horizontally and vertically integrated programmes that form a foundation and/or foster the systemic operation of the most important elements of e-administration as regards the government as a whole.

Both the process of strategy formulation and the implementation of the Strategy require the wide-ranging involvement of affected institutions, a requirement met via the establishment of the IT Commission of Administration (KIB) in 2007. The fundamental task of KIB, in accordance with the administrative operative programmes of the “New Hungary” Development Plan, is to renew the coordination of administration-related information technology, to harmonise the development of electronic administration infrastructure, to enhance cooperative capacity with a view to improving the quality of public services, to disseminate electronic culture, to promote the establishment of client friendly systems, and to harmonise the development of related back office systems. The conditions for effective central coordination in the field of administration-related information technology are fully ensured through the new Committee. Within the Committee, subcommittees have been established which provide opportunities for the establishment of forums for professional dialogues on relevant IT issues with administrative institutions and national interest groups of municipalities.

In the light of the fact that over the course of the developments targeting the establishment of electronic public services we wish to rely, to a significant extent, on resources provided by the EU, an important task over the course of strategy formulation, as regards the developments of the State Reform Operative Programme (ÁROP) and the Electronic Administration Operative Programme (EKOP) impacting e-administration, was the definition of strategic directions in planning, as well as ensuring the strategic background within the temporal scope of the strategy.

Alongside the planning of EKOP that was undertaken in addition to the coordination of the Management Authority of the Administration Reform Programmes, one of the most significant tasks in the recent past was the preparation of priority projects within the uniform frameworks set up by the Strategy and to be implemented with the support of EKOP and ÁROP.

Based on the careful planning implemented recently and detailed above, it was possible to commence the implementation stage as early as in 2008, and now it is viable to embark on the implementation of tasks and developments laid down in EKOP and ÁROP.

The expansion of the Central Electronic Service System and the development of its services are to ensue, as a result of which the client friendly nature of the central network’s interfaces and services may become more pronounced, thereby enabling clients to easily handle the data available to them on a transparent and custom tailored interface, to access required and up-to-date information and services as well as to manage their business through this facility.

An information technology related system of requirements is being developed, which will define the standardisation, technological and semantic requirements necessary for the interoperability of electronic administrative developments, thereby facilitating the development of client-centred, uniform, well-coordinated and cost-effective developments taking account of the interoperability of subsystems.

The Electronic Payment and Accounting System under development shall in the future offer both electronic (remote) and personal electronic payment services to citizens, the realisation of which is a crucial precondition of fully electronic, fourth tier public service accessible to the widest possible range of citizens.

Within the framework of the deregulation and simplification of procedures in designated fields, the systemic review of the legal corpus, the simplification of administrative procedures and the reduction of administrative burdens may continue, to be followed by establishing the foundation of procedures for the electronic system.

As a result of the foundation of the Budget Management System that ensures the management of the economic events of central budgetary institutions over the course of their entire lifecycle, up-to-date data concerning the liquidity of the central budget will become accessible; and in addition, the system will also support the planning of the central budget, thereby contributing to the provision of public information, and further to the development of transparent and effective governance.

The Government Customer Information Centre requires further modernisation and centralisation. Instead of current, fragmented customer service departments located in various offices specialised to handle certain types of matters, customer service centres must be established where all administration related matters could be handled in a single location.

The implementation of this objective is served by a programme consisting of three interdependent components: the Administrative Customer Service Knowledge Database, the Central Contact Centre and the Integrated Administrative Customer Service. These components jointly result in the gradual replacement of a hitherto case-centred perspective with a client-centred perspective.

In addition to the above-mentioned horizontal programmes that serve the objective of developing integrated government services and forming the foundation for the systematic operation of the most important components of e-administration, the development of significant sectoral systems is being implemented such as the modernisation of the court of registration systems, the modernisation of the registration and active registry of civil organisations, the development of birth certificate administration, the establishment of a single-window customs administration, the modernisation of transfers of family welfare payments, the implementation of a tax-subject centred data provision model, the modernisation of the system of title deed registries, the development of a central IT system supporting the system of intercompliance criteria of agricultural subsidies, the development of electronic archives, and the establishment of technical conditions necessary for the electronic verification of client data by attorneys, public notaries and bailiffs.

All of these developments will offer greater freedom of choice for citizens over the course of their ordinary lives, will enable them to use public services in a more custom tailored fashion, and will allow for the improvement of administration and the effectiveness of government operations through the development of a more advanced legal environment and service oriented governance.

Even though the designation of strategic directions relying on the foundations of already achieved results and the definition of the desired vision of the future have already been accomplished, several tasks remain to be performed, given the fact that within the upcoming time period these objectives must be implemented alongside the carefully planned and effective utilisation of EU funding.

The forthcoming period will consequently provide the answer as to whether, via the developments corresponding with the uniform framework defined by the Strategy, Hungary’s administration will be able to take advantage of the opportunities offered by technology in the transformation and modernisation of administration operations, and as to whether Hungary can thereby retain or even improve its average ICT development ranking among EU Member States.

Modified: 2008. July 17.

Source:Electronic Government Centre