Overview October 1999: Hungary

Hungary has a tradition of dealing with information theory and the social implications of informatics. Numerous Hungarian researchers, scientists and inventors played key roles in developing the computer which opened up the potential for an information era. These scientific activities have left their mark, yet the actual construction of an information society in Hungary seems to be trailing. The following constitute the principle factors for the development of such an information society in Hungary:

1. the domain of ministries and governmental and public administrative organisations;
2. the representatives of social and expert organisations (the third or non-profit sector);
3. the realm of industry (the private sector).

Endeavors toward establishing infrastructure, as well as in supporting the civil/non-profit sphere and research and development come from this latter group.

1. Ministries, governmental and public administrative organisations

Ministries, governmental and public administrative organisations fulfill a significant role in building an information society in Hungary. Workshops function within several ministries in order to support, link and co-ordinate initiatives related to informatics and an information society within their own domains and aid their development.

• The Deputy Under Secretary of State responsible for informatics and governmental telecommunication concerns in the Prime Minister’s Office http://www.meh.hu/ oversees the development of the government’s information policies; manages and organizes information and governmental telecommunications activities within the sphere of responsibility and authority of the Office; and co-ordinates the centralised public purchasing tasks related to the above. In addition to this, it co-ordinates the work of the Inter Departmental Committee for Informatics http://www.itb.hu/ which in turn coordinates the information activities of central state administration, and it is responsible for lawful and expert use of the budget determined by the Finance Act and specifically aimed at ensuring the development of information technology activities. The most recent information strategy plan, entitled Magyar válasz az információs társadalom kihívásaira [The Hungarian response to the challenges of an information society] and the expert material called Kiindulási Tézisek a Magyar Felkészülési Stratégia az Információs Társadalomhoz [Initial Theses: ‘Hungarian Preparatory Strategies for an Information Society’] are being prepared on the behalf of the Office.

• The Ministry of Economics http://www.gm.hu/ has an important task in preparing consumers for the new challenges (globalization, environmental protection, an information society), and in expanding and organizing consumer education to ensure that they receive a flow of information, as well as to follow changes in the labour market and actively support distance work.

• The duties of the Ministry of Youth and Sport http://www.ism.hu/ are to coordinate the ministries that take part in matters that involve young people and tasks related to youth, with special emphasis on preparing the new generation to be active participants in an information society, its support, ensuring equal opportunities and so on. The Schoolnet project and the National Information Infrastructure Development Programme is in the care of the Ministry of Education http://www.om.hu/.

• The Ministry of Transport, Communication and Water Management, as the trustee of telecommunication policy, is the forum of necessary regulation, creating opportunities and drafting bills offers an excellent foundation for preparing regulations aiding or assisting the amalgamation of telecommunication and information technologies and, linked to this, for supporting all those activities which strive toward an information society http://www.mav.hu/khvm.

• Regional development depends on local and regional government and is realized through central administrative or industrial projects. In addition, certain local and national civil organisations also take care of regional and rural development.

• The National Technical Development Committee http://www.omfb.hu/ is an institution established by the government to coordinate infrastructural and other technical developments. The Technological Forcast Programme functions within the framework of the Committee, a programme which started global analysis in 1998 on the authority of the Committee. The analysis is a systematic evaluation of the scientific and technical developments and the expected market, economic and social trends from the perspective of their impact on the competitiveness of the nation (or region, branch, expert branch, or company), its profitability and the quality of life of the populace http://www.omfb.hu/.

• The National Communication and Informatics Council is an advisory body established according to the statutes relating to the media. Its fundamental duties are to offer advice, opinion, comments and suggestions for the government to assist processes in the field of telecommunication and informatics. An important aspect of its work is to ensure that the individual participant regions have equal opportunities in the competition for markets. Since the statutes on media closed the National Frequency Economic Council, the right of comment of the National Division of Frequencies also fell into their remit and their suggestions also extend into regulatory issues, too.

• The aim of the International Institute of Technology is to introduce and dissimulate high quality international technologies, intensify development of activities connected to technology transfer and to help Hungarian technology which meets international standards to reach the global market. Besides realizing services fulfilling these aims, the institute is to establish maintain an informatics and organisational background http://www.neti.hu/.

• The Communication Inspectorate was established by the government in 1993 on the basis of the statutes concerning the media. The authority oversees the observance of rules, carries out the functions of allocation and regulation and budgets the so-called limited resources, such as frequency, in the area of civil telecommunication http://www.hif.hu/.

2. Corporate Organisations:

• The telecommunication arbitration forum is a social organisation which was established in 1994 and incorporates organisations in Hungary with an interest in telecommunication. It depicts and represents the interests of the telecommunication field as a whole. Among the members are the producers of telecommunications technology, enterprises overseeing the quality of the parameters of data transfer, the representatives of cable television organisations, as well as the middle and higher education institutions of the regions and the consumer protection organisations who also play an important role http://www.tef.hu/.

• The Informatics Arbitration Forum is an organisation for those connected to informatics services, and its members are the delegates of regulatory organisations, representatives of end users, organisations ensuring the representation of service suppliers, and non profit institutions. The dual functions of the Forum are to ensure an opportunity to articulate views and to help to achieve consensus in the area of informatics service supplies, and to represent the interests of its members within the most varied related expert organisations and in legislation. The Forum endeavors to participate in forming opinion, drafting bills, as well as in regulatory functions, in the most effective way possible.

3. Social organisations, universities and research institutes

The fact that in 1995 the first concept of informatics development in Hungary, the National Informatics Strategy, which the Hungarian parliament accepted, arose from the initiatives of these organisations demonstrates the intense participation of civil organisations dealing with the Hungarian information society.

• The Technical University of Budapest http://www.bme.hu/ is one of the bastions of the nations education in informatics and a hotbed of informatics developments, as well as fundamental and applied research. The university has extensive contacts with informatics and telecommunication companies operating within the country. Several courses run within the faculty of Economics and Humanities deal with the application of informatics directed at, and affecting society. Extensive research is carried out at the faculties Information Society and Trend Research Centre which investigate the topic from the perspectives of economics, sociology and the history of ideology http://www.ittk.hu/infinit.

• The Eötvös Loránd University - Institute of Sociology and Social Policy is the most significant national centre investigating the social effects of informatics with special attention to changes in the public sphere. The educators of the institute organise numerous lectures, courses and seminars on the social effects of the information explosion focusing on the effect of media and informatics on privacy http://www.nscnt2.elte.hu/elte/esh5.html.

• At the Faculty of Communications of the Jannus Pannonius University - Faculty of Humanities research is carried out into the changes in communication within the information society, changes in the characteristics of the message, i.e. the communicatum and the effects of the changes in forms of communication within society http://www.jpte.hu.

• The UNIWORLD Virtual University has constructed a virtual corporate network with the participation of Hungarian and foreign higher education institutions. It is a form of interactive, interdisciplinary distance learning exploiting the opportunities of multi-media, a scholarly research programme of social theory and the philosophy of cognisance. UNIWORLD targets the whole scope of education, strives toward an improvement in the effectiveness of Hungarian education principally in the Hungarian provinces. UNIWORLD could become an exemplar of how electronic communication can be utilized in a characteristic way for the purpose of higher education among small nations, ethnic groups and even linguistically isolated territories http://www.uniworld.hu/.

• The activities of several research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences are related to the building of information societies. The tasks of the Computer and Automation Institute http://www.sztaki.hu/ are to carry out extensive fundamental and applied research in informatics, control engineering and applied mathematics, to make use of the thus accumulated special knowledge in the realms of research development, system development and integration, in consultation, and software development. Their activities in the field of applications concentrate on vast and complex systems where manifold knowledge, the possibility of organising larger teams, the infrastructure of the institute and its financial weight (stability and level of responsibility) come to fruition. Among the spectrum of the Institute’s tasks is passing on the newly gained knowledge accumulated through its research activities within the framework of graduate and postgraduate education. To fulfill this the Institute operates several common and external departments in cooperation with several national Hungarian universities and takes a share in doctoral programmes. Within the Institute of Philosophy http://www.phil-inst.hu/ the newly aroused issues and questions originating in the information society and informatics development concerning the field of philosophy are examined.

• Third Millennium Foundation and the Strategy Research Institute was established in 1992, it carries out research, prepares strategies, encourages development and its principle research areas are the following: national strategy until 2020; information society theory; civil society, connected to which the institute has extensive publishing activities http:www.inco.hu.

• John von Neumann Computer Society
  Year of establishment: 1968. Staff: (members) 2500 private entities (individuals) 200 legal entities (organizations) The objective of the Society is to facilitate an independent professional forum in Hungary and/or in Hungarian-speaking foreign societies:
  • the application and development of information technology, and the dissemination of results;
  • the preservation and/or advancement of the prestige, quality and ethics of the profession;
  • the enforcement of the opinions and interests of professionals specializing in information technology, and/or applying information technology aids and methods in other professional areas;
  • broad range participation in international professional life;
  • providing information to, and facilitating the exchange of experience among information technology experts;
  • spreading of the culture of information technology and education.
    
    
• The Federation of Technical and Scientific Societies (MTESZ) was established in 1948. Its aim was to coordinate the work of the founder fourteen professional societies of that time, to help their collaboration and to protect their interests. Nowadays there are forty-three societies in the federation; almost all Hungarian professional-scientific organizations belong to MTESZ. These organizations have more than one hundred thousand members altogether, mainly engineers, researchers, agrarian, financial experts and of natural sciences, economists, the representatives of the so-called technical intelligantsia. In addition corporate bodies, enterprises and business can also be the members;the societies have thousands of such relations with enterprises, firms and institutions. MTESZ covers the country with its Houses of Science and Technology.
  
  
• The National Technical Information Centre and Library is the repository of documents dealing with informatics, information technology and information society http://www.omikk.hu/. The Hungarian Electronic Library is a project of the National Information Infrastructure Development Programme and the National Szechenyi Library. It is the central storehouse of freely accessible electronic documents with educational, scholarly or cultural significance in the Hungarian language or with particular a Hungarian relevance http://www.mek.iif.hu/.

• The Janos Neuman Public Cultural Service Association was established on 1 November 1987 with the principle task of preparing the establishment a future digital library and initiating the digitalization of cultural heritage http://www.neumann-haz.hu/.

• The Hungarian Telehouse Association came about in January 1995 with the aim of aiding the Hungarian Telehouse movement. Nearly two hundred community communication centres now operate nationwide, opening up the opportunity for the inhabitants to familiarise themselves with and make use of modern technology and the opportunities of the internet.

• The National Association of Intelligent Settlements emerged in January 1999 and carries out public service activities. Its members comprise of settlements and enterprises of various sizes, other public administrative organisations, foundations and private individuals. The Association opens new perspectives for national settlements and enterprises in the field of the development of services connected with the internet. The aims of this social organisation are to assist the formation of information connections between the individual settlements through the dissemination of developmental and operational experiences known and practiced for several decades in western Europe.

• The Scientific Association of Infocommunications is a voluntary and autonomous community of experts in the fields of telecommunication, electronics and informatics with a background in technology, economy, law, or education. It has almost four thousand private and one hundred and thirty legal (of which fifteen are foreign) members. The Association takes part in the analysis of technical, economic and social issues related to its field and passes on the synthesized views of its experts to scholarly, scientific, legislative and regulative industrial users and educational organs and institutions. The Association monitors the international and national achievements in its fields, it assists expert and business relationships between international and Hungarian business and institutions. It also organises professional lectures, debates, workshops, congresses, conferences, seminars, exhibitions in order to pass on and debate scientific, technological and technical knowledge http://www.mtesz.hu/hiradastechnika/honlap.htm.

• The National Host Association has recently been founded in Hungary with the objective of speeding up of the establishment of a Hungarian infocommunicational infrastructure corresponding to future demands through participation in EU programmes.

4. Industrial sector, company associations

• The Hungarian Association of Database Suppliers is an autonomous expert body founded in 1991 as a national social organisation. It organises and links the members active in the fields of database development and distribution as well as information services. It unifies and represents their interests from professional legal and ethical perspectives. It aids the free flow of information, the construction of an information market and the social utilization of information as well as assisting and initiating in the development of international economic relations. It develops the means by which copyrights that appear in databases can be protected, it uncovers and constructs these opportunities, supports organisations with similar targets and participates in the work of such organisations. For all of these it carries out educational and employment activities http://www.dbassoc.hu/.

• The aim of the Informatics Enterprise Association is to establish a balanced representation of interests in Hungary within the informatics industry, computer technology and telecommunications, as appropriate to their scale. It is the responsibility of the Association to give continuous reports to the financial decision making bodies (government, parties, chambers, etc.) about the events, tendencies and problems of the profession, and if necessary to enforce/endorse the interests of informatics. Other key elements of the work of the Association are to keep its members informed ensuring communication among them. This it does by offering regular club activities, lectures, and other events. By setting up a company information database it has contributed more effectively to partnerships http://www.ivsz.hu/.

• The ten biggest Hungarian telecommunication and computer technology companies brought about the INFOKOM Association. The main tasks of the Association are the following: effective and active participation in developing the Hungarian information society with a special focus on the EU integrational processes; assisting the processes of convergence in the fields of information technology, telecommunications and electronic media, as well as the representation of the common interest of the members, phrasing and voicing expert viewpoints in the national legislative and regulative processes.

• INFOPARK is a scientific and technical park giving home to research and development activities of societies active mostly in businesses of informatics and other related fields. The supported industrial sub-branches are the following: informatics, telecommunications, dataprocessing equipment, electronic consumer goods, technologies using multimedia, process government/automating technologies and software development, along with related service and complementary branches. The aim of establishing INFOPARK was to create a scientific and technical park that can serve two functions simultaneously: one the one hand it offers a base for the research and development activities of international and Hungarian companies, and on the other to serve as a base and centre for modern and prime technologies to be developed in the country.

5. Media

In Hungary both the printed and the electronic press gives voice to views, suggestions, and so on about the forming of an information society. The main forums of publications on the information society are on-line news letters, and the printed professional press (such as journals, informatics papers, etc.) often also accessible in electronic format. Expert programmes of public service/civil and commercial television as well as the informatics supplements of national dailies discuss the issue.

Processes within the realms of media are overseen by the National Radio and Television Board established by the media statutes in 1996 in order to realize free information, information flow, and freedom of speech.