ARIADNE: Laszlo, after more than one year that Hungary is full member of the European Union, what has changed in your reality there?

László : I am sure that nobody in Hungary expected miracles from the accession. Despite of our rational attitude, after more than one year, now many of us are a bit disappointed. I have the feeling of missed chances. I know that the membership opened opportunities mutually for Hungary and the other member states. But, in my view, my country was too weak in economic and mental way at the moment of opening the doors for the strong and eager foreign capital. This type of capital was not really an investor but it was a “collector” of our domestic markets, buyer of pro perties at prices below the real value. Now, a lot of companies are closed, the products come from abroad and we pay a lot more for them, much more people are unemployed. Who is to blame? I do not now exactly. Mainly our politicians, our poor interest enforcement ability, our weakness to create protective legislation. Now I see that we did not prepare ourselves carefully. On the other hand, it is good to be a citizen of the European Union. It is good to be in partnership with the fellow countries in an easy co-o perative environment. This OneStopGov IST project is a good example for the joint effort to achieve a common, pan-European goal. It is quite different to be a member of a democratic community instead of a “member” of communist camp. In the future, I want to see more optimistic people around me ex periencing the benefits of the membership in the everyday life (like it is in traveling without passport). I would like to see a lot of companies to exploit the opportunities like the others do, so we have to learn a lot!

ARIADNE: Public Administrations – we all try to avoid interactions with them. In Greece, especially that I have own ex periences, people don’t feel at all easy – and what happens is either of the following: either they feel uncomfortable and talk to the people of the public organization as if they are their masters (which at a great extent is the case…), showing an extremely high degree of ignorance of the processes as well as their own rights, or go to the other extreme: talk to them impolitely and exhibiting a paranoic behaviour – as if they are somehow trying to su persede the paranoia that is inherent in many of the public sector processes. What is your view on the above?

László: My view is based mainly on my own ex perience which taught me to recognize the officer as a human being as myself. It is very rare that a member of a public administration acts as a master. The bureaucracy itself is the main problem (the common enemy), either the client and the officer suffer from it. I am sure that if we modernized the processes significantly, the co-o peration between the administration and the citizens would improve automatically. But I have to admit, that sometimes the situation is the same as it is in your question.

ARIADNE: Your organization is part of the OneStopGov project. As I am participating in the project too, I see that a usual mistake we do is that we base our analyses only on the normal conditions, and we totally leave out of our implementations the Kafkian reality that exists in the field of public sector processes. Citizen John Smith exists only in theory – my last two encounters with public sector institutions in Greece (one for my wife’s passport and a second one for a change in my taxation certificates) provide me with the confidence that independently on how much Semantic Web we shall ‘pour’ to the reality of European Administrations, or how many Web services we shall implement for them, there is a need for different approaches that shall draw their paradigms from the Administrative theory, the theory of Management or even the (clinical) psychology and sociology fields. What is your view on the above?

László: Basically I agree with you, the actor on behalf of a public authority should be a well trained ex pert instead of a gearwheel in a complex machine. But I think that the machine itself should be built up of sophisticated administrative processes flexible enough to handle the not normal cases (as you mentioned above). The people o perating this administrative machine should be the intelligence contacting the citizens and initiating the process changes if they think it is necessary. This pile of administration processes can not remain carved in stone. Consequently, the IT tools can be appropriate only if the processes themselves are appropriate. So I want to emphasize that the human beings within the public administration can put the paradigms you mentioned above in practice only if they work in an environment which is rational and does not contain mad elements. My latest ex perience: I asked the local council for permission to place a container on the pavement for a day. The written permission arrived my home a month later, the postman tried to handle it three occasions in day time (of course) without success because I was not at home (=John Smith works in day time). Then I had to go to the post office but the letter was not there any more, it was sent back to the council. In the end, I had to go to the council personally to learn how much fee I should pay for the permission. If we consider the time spent on this matter (the time of the postman, the time of the officer and my time), the fee itself was a fraction of the melted cost. This was a type of non appropriately designed process.

ARIADNE: E-democracy and e-participation: how much would you favor a reality that would build the future of the citizens on the use of electronic media? What I mean is that Internet seems to me an ideal medium for getting your certificates, submitting your application forms, but not good at all for organizing and implementing the democratic processes using the existing paradigms. What do you think?

László: There are two main aspects of this question. Many of the citizens do not trust the authorities. How could they trust an electronic system which is more uncontrollable by them than the existing pa per based system? On the other hand, I do not see the willingness of the politicians to start e-democracy. Perhaps they are afraid of the success… They would feel decreasing of their power if crucial decisions could be made by the citizens. Anyway, I think that “enforcing” e-democracy would mean a great step forward in building up information society. People could ex perience that power goes to them day by day, not only in every 4 year at time of voting for representatives, or at time of referendums. The system could be used frequently to ask citizens for their opinion on important questions. As far as I know, in Switzerland it works. I know that practicing e-democracy causes several logistic problems (e-signo, Internet access points, security, data protection etc.), but the solution must be so comprehensive that the other e-activities would be pushed forward significantly. So I am in favor of it.

ARIADNE: Public private partnerships in Hungary have been much more advancing than in Greece. Political parties – especially the government ones – seem fascinated by the idea of selling the wealth that is owned by the state in terms of fixed assets, and transforming their role from ‘running’ a business to this of receiving the ‘rents’. I know that this is not totally true, but it is the sad bottomline. At the end, the Member States will find themselves with piles of problems and an unimagined poverty as they will not have any authority on anything. Coming from a state reality that seemed to have a social face to its citizens, how do you judge the current sell-out of public sector wealth that takes place in many countries (Germany for example inaugurated this process under its previous government coalition)?

László: Regarding PPP constructions: from now it is not so attractive for the government to make contracts with expenses that will be realized in the future, because the EU Commission does not allow this out of budget technique. So PPP contracts must be within the budget, and the government can not avoid registering this type of commitments. In my view, the slogan “the state is a careless owner” is not true. There must be a limit of selling the common asset. There are examples that show that the result does not serve the common good, e.g. after selling waterworks to foreigners the prices got higher. The state itself should not get dependent from the private sphere in strategic fields. It is a wrong policy when a government (local or state) tries to compensate the deficit by selling the rest of the public asset. This practice is consuming the future today without having the consent of the owner which is definitely the public. I think that in this field democracy does not work pro perly, and e-democracy would help.

ARIADNE: I am extremely happy to work with you personally in the OneStopGov IST project. However, I am afraid that the majority of people coming from Administrations show high degrees of incompetence. They are unable to design processes, improve them, test new approaches, change the ways they are working. What happens is that at some point a consultancy company appears that shall try to provide solutions without knowing the problems, not having talked to the people at all, ignoring the reality they face and in general showing extremely high arrogance. However, the people as well as their syndicates and official unions don’t give any notice to these matters. They mainly care about salary increases. What is the reason and how can this improve?

László: Basically I agree with you in terms of lack of competence. But where can you find in written form the description of competence required in administrative processes? Almost nowhere! I say that firstly the government processes should be re-organized with the required competences. Only then, a well o perating human political system should find the right persons matching the precisely described posts. So there is a lot to do. This will be a long run, but it is inevitable. Many participants, high level sponsorship and decent amount of money are required. Now in Hungary this process has been launched. A centralized, government level human policy is in force. The new government has started government process re-organization (GPR) activities in some ministries. Going ahead step by step the need of the external consultancy will be reduced, and the consultants can concentrate on problems which are really out of scope of civil servants.

Who is Laszlo?

Name: László RUMI

Nationality: Hungarian

Civil status: married, 3 children

Profession: M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Budapest

Present position: CIO of Kopint-Datorg IT and Asset Managing Company Limited

Ex perience in management: 20 years

• 2002-2005 deputy CEO of Kopint-Datorg Company Limited
• 1991-2002 owner and General Manager of BR Consulting Ltd
• 1990-1991 Deputy General Manager in Hemingway Computing Ltd.
• 1982-1989 Head of IT department of National Bureau of Measures and Standards
• 1978-1982 Computing Centre of Universities

Key qualifications:

• ex pert IT systems and business processes in the public sector
• ex perienced in Phare twinning projects (management, co-o peration)
• ex perienced in project management
• ex pert in business intelligence, budget, financial affairs
• knowledge of both management and IT (“bilingual” in business processes)
• having a good grasp of highly complicated large scale systems