Online provision of public services in Hungary
About this good practice
After joining the EU, municipalities were not in the focus of digitalization; they regulated their operation separately. Larger municipalities were more successful in this area, but typically just created websites and island-like solutions; integration between professional systems was low. Based on this experience, the government has come to the conclusion that local governments’ IT developments have to continue in a centralised way. In 2010, a modernization process began: Municipality ASP was created.
Municipality ASP is a kind of outsourcing: the users use a software application over the internet, with its related hardware and operating services, managing their daily administrative tasks themselves. The service provider operates the background infrastructure, performs system administration, provides software operation, ensures legislation monitoring, installs updates and manages a Helpdesk. The current service portfolio consists of integrated systems like local tax management, industrial and commercial management, a municipality portal service (an optional service for publishing a local government website cost-efficiently), a local government e-administration single point of contact portal, document management, ASP e-payment (VPOS), etc. All of these services are available for use after the clients authenticated themselves via the Central Authentication Agent service with the use of a Client Gate account, a Hungarian elD card or telephone code identification (SMS).
Resources needed
The project (funded by an Operational Programme) covering the development and extension of the ASP to be able to include any municipality was implemented from almost 19 billion HUF. However, joining the system is possible from less: Nyíregyháza has done it in 2019 with a 6,287,630 HUF budget.
Evidence of success
Until 2020, nearly 3,000 municipalities joined the system.
The Municipality ASP’s portfolio provides an online form management tool for local governments. Right now it provides 100 templates, but more are published continuously. These can be customised by municipality officers, after which they can be published on the Local Government E-Administration Portal – so far more than 93% of the connected municipalities have published personalised online forms.
Potential for learning or transfer
Choosing ASP is a cost- and resource-saving solution. Savings for the municipalities are in the reduction of the training and working time needs of the internal IT specialists. Fewer resources are required also to monitor and maintain the users’ hardware: PCs do not have to have the same parameters as if the softwares were running on them – a more “serious” software system is so resource-intensive that it often involves purchasing new computers, while in the case of ASP, the existing ones are usually sufficient. Therefore, the ASP service is a technologically and economically favorable solution for smaller organizations which otherwise would not have been able to access integrated software systems supporting their management due to the high investment and operating costs.
In summary, the benefits of ASP are the following: cost-effectiveness (with easily projected costs); reliable, safe operation; greater data and IT security; low hardware requirements; and up-to-date developments.
Further information
Good practice owner
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