Update November 2000: Hungary

1. State, government and official organisations, programs

The development of the Hungarian information society is of paramount importance concerning our European integration. That is why the office of a government commissary for information technology was established to determine and co-ordinate the tasks and establish the basis for a future ministry. Subsequent to the latest reorganisation of the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Water Management (KHVM), on 23^rd May, Zoltán Sík was appointed the government commissioner for information technology and telecommunications operating in the organisational unit of the Prime Minister’s Office (MeH). His duties among others involve the codification of the law ensuring the Hungarian regulation of digital signatures and the designing of the ministry of information technology expected to be set up by 2002.

The Inter-ministerial Committee for Information Technology (ICIT) held a two-day session in the government holiday resort in Balatonöszöd at the beginning of June, in which several experts and representatives of large companies participated and gave lectures.

The host of the meeting was Marietta Zöld-Roska, chairman of ICIT, information technology deputy under-secretary of state. It was announced during the meeting that ICIT is not only an advisory board any more, but a committee that also makes strategic decisions. Another important change is that in case of organisations of national scope under direct government guidance, the function of a CIO (Chief Information Officer), taking its lead directly from the chief administrative officer was introduced on an American model. This implies that at the departments information officers got to the same level as ministers of finance and economy, who directly take part in making decisions concerning the department. CIO at the same time is also a member of ICIT.

ICIT, by the way, has seven professional committees out of which three have already received significant European Union recognition.

The biggest government projects were demonstrated during the sessions, one of which (Government File Registry System; KIR - Kormányzati Iratnyilvántartó Rendszer) deals with electronic file management while the other (KIKERES) aims at administrative data property registration.

András Szigeti gave an account of ICIT’s international contacts. As he mentioned, the bilateral and multilateral co-operation with similar organisations of other governments are on the right track, but ICIT has important contacts with numerous foreign organisations besides OECD as well, and he is also the representative of some of them.

Marietta Zöld-Roska outlined that the Hungarian government is not only no way inferior in following the lead of the European Union, but to an extent is some way ahead of French government bodies. As far as the system called KIKERES created on American-Canadian model intended to enable access to public information is concerned for instance, while this is currently being in the initial phase of application in Europe, the system has already been implemented to a considerable extent in Hungary. Another significant achievement is that thanks to the NIIF community the Hungarian tutorial-research network is on the same level as leading European countries.

2. Education

The centre and computer science training laboratory of Cisco Network Academy in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county was inaugurated by Peter Tufo, Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America on 7 June at the Miklós Wesselényi Vocational Secondary School in Nyíregyháza.

Cisco Systems Hungary Ltd., who bestowed all the equipment of the laboratory, is sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce in the creation of the Hungarian network. "The aim," the envoy said, "is that the advancing Hungarian industry get highly qualified information experts from the educational institutions who meet the challenges of the future."

In the inauguration ceremony Róbert Budafoki, director of Cisco Systems Hungary said students could take part in study-circle-like training courses in the established centre and its laboratory to acquire marketable knowledge. He added that it is very important for the Hungarian industry to participate in the so-called global Internet economy in the highest possible proportion, which can be attained through its information scientists.

The institution now puts its effort to meet the needs for experts with its training of two American multinational companies, Butler Manufacturing Company and Flextronics International, settled in Nyíregyháza. From now on information scientists can also be trained in the computer laboratory for these large companies.

The Network for Youth public utility company (http://www.mgx.hu/hi) launched free Internet courses for young people showing an interest from 24 July.

The head of the program is Annamária Szendro-Oláh. In the course of the program basic level Internet courses are held in Budapest and some other cities in the country during the forthcoming months. Nearly 200 young people will be trained to use the Internet by the end of this year. The program and the continuous service are sponsored by the department for youth.

Besides free Internet training, the public utility company also provides free Internet access for youth organisations that already possess suitable computers. With a HUF30-million fund by the Ministry of Youth and Sport (ISM), a program called HiNet was launched this year, which is intended to connect all the Hungarian youth communities to the Internet.

ISM set the aim of creating a national information service providing system. Within this, they will invite tenders for youth organisations in 2001 to provide them an opportunity to acquire computers and other related technical equipment.

This was the third time the Internet marketing entrepreneurial camp for students was arranged in Keszthely.

In the course of simulated enterprises, the young people having prepared the business plans by the end of the ten-day camp came to the stage to create the homepages of their imaginary companies using the newly acquired knowledge about online marketing. The Net camp organised by Kikelet 21 Szellemi Muhely and Lezlisoft Computer Graphics invited students in two turns, between 20-29 July and from 29 July to 7 August. The Internet marketing student camp operates a mailing list and has had a website for two years: http://www.lezlisoft.com/tabor

The Hungarian member of Benedict School international school network launched an information broker training course from September 2000.

Such experts are intended to be trained here who can appropriately interpret data mined from different databases and forward them to the customer providing professional advice as well. This training is especially launched for employees of large and medium-sized companies sensitive to strategic decisions and organisations supporting small and medium-scale enterprises and also for local governments who take their servicing function seriously.

RAG Bildung Intertraining Ltd., a training centre in Hungary, was established by the German Ruhrkohle group training company in October 1999. The mother company, due to its professional and extension mining training as the basis of its activity, has also become partner of economic enterprises, ministries, local governments, labour centres and commercial and craftsmen’s chambers reaching beyond the borders of the concern. Certificates issued by the school are valid in all member states of the European Community.

In the program experts from such firms and higher educational institutions instruct as the University of Economics and State Administration in Budapest, Hungarian Foundation for Enterprise Promotion (MVA), ELTE’s Law-Faculty or well-known consulting companies.

Attila Becskeházi, presidential advisor for MVA expressed that the co-ordinator of the integrator subcontractor program announced by the Ministry of Economy in January 2000 is MVA. So, in the framework of the program MVA this year establishes 7 information and integration centres throughout the country for the development of subcontractors around multinational and Hungarian large companies. They also intend to employ information brokers in these centres to help subcontractors get information.

A laboratory meeting the highest expectations, suitable for object oriented development, equipped with up-to-date tools was created at the Computer Science Department of Eötvös Loránd University of Arts and Sciences (ELTE) with the co-operation of IQSoft and IBM Hungary Ltd. The two companies provided financial and intellectual resources in order to enable ELTE’s students to become familiar with the latest application development methods and tools as early as possible. Within the frame of the support, IQSoft and IBM provide software for the laboratory; professional background for high-quality education and their assistance will enable the computers in the laboratory to be capable of running applications that require massive hardware.

In the framework of the collaboration IQSoft will provide Ratinal Rose tools and professional assistance, and IBM will provide VisualAge developmental environment and professional documents. They also plan to introduce DB2 UDB and WebSphere later on.

The Ministry of Education will establish computer laboratories in 100 schools by the end of this year, while 950 schools will get computers and printers. The ministry this year separated HUF160 million for supplying computers for Hungarian schools beyond the borders.

3. Competitions

The Association of Information and Computer Science Teachers (Informatika-Számítástechnika Tanárok Egyesülete - ISZE), the Program and Curriculum Development Centre of the National Institute for Public Education (OKI) and the New Pedagogical Review (Új Pedagógiai Szemle) invite application for the competition called ‘The way I use the Internet’. The deadline for application is 30 September.

The competition is intended to help recognise, reveal and make public those achievements and positive and adaptable pedagogical experience that were gained in Hungarian educational institutions during the use of Internet laboratories. It expects the presentation of different curricular and extracurricular activities, cases, methods or projects, which helped students expand their knowledge, made their free time activities full of content and played an innovative role in the educational and didactic processes through the use of the Internet and multimedia. The best competition works are going to be published in the professional papers New Pedagogical Review and Inspiration, and on the Internet on the homepages of OKI (http://www.oki.hu/) and ISZE (http://www.isze.hu/).

4. Conferences, exhibitions, fairs

Dénes Gábor College and LSI Educational Centre arranged the global meeting of Hungarian Information Scientists for the second time on 5-8 June, which is connected with the programs of the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Dénes Gábor, the Dénes Gábor Memorial Conference and the Holographic Symposium.

The lectures dealt with a number of fields like e-business, digital signatures, social effects of information technology, educational multimedia applications, Exchange informatics and issues of medical informatics.

Parallel with the conferences a professional exhibition was held at the college with the participation of well-known information technology companies.

An e-commerce conference and exhibition (http://www.ecforum.hu/ec2000) was held in Budapest Vásárcsarnok from 13 to 15 June. The sixth annual conference this year presented the most important fields in e-commerce in the interpretation of the most prominent representatives of the filed. The main objective of the program was to introduce the great potential in e-commerce to companies and the entrepreneur community.

The other prominent field of the conference involved the development issues of Hungarian electronic commerce and e-business, an overview on the problems and providing a future perspective. The lectures provided complex international outlook on the most important guidelines and trends of the field with special attention to the e-commerce solutions of countries of the Central-Eastern European region waiting for EU accession.

In the program, service providers with interest in e-commerce also displayed their companies, products and services in an exhibition. The program organisers expected primarily employers of multinational and large companies and executives for ICT companies and state administration to come on the first day, while on the second and third days they expected representatives of small and medium-sized companies and other organisations and information scientists to visit the program. Respected leaders and experts of well-known e-commerce companies stepped up the professional standards of the conference with their high-standard lectures. Meanwhile, experts commissioned to lead the sections took care of the meaningful flow of the section with the administrative support of the organisers.

On 18 June a conference called Internetfiesta was arranged in the National Széchényi Library (www.oszk.hu). Due to the high costs of PC and telecommunications the role of domestic civil organisations and libraries will rise in the distribution of the Internet. Among others, the conference dealt with the issue of the library development program launched in 1998, which enables readers to get access to the collection of all the member libraries from any place. After national and local institutions, village libraries will also be involved in the system next year. Also mentioned in the conference was that Soros Foundation’s C3 will provide websites for 1100 nonprofit organisations and 40 periodicals.

The Congress Centre was the scene of the commercial exhibition and conference called ISEC-Cards Eastern Europe, which dealt with smart card and information security for the third time this occasion. The program has now been developed into the most prominent conference and commercial exhibition of the region. The chairmen of the conference held on 20-22 June were Tony Fekete, chairman of Europay International’s Eastern European division and Tamás Foltányi, chairman of Hungarian Smart Card Forum, Partner PricewaterhouseCoopers.

A number of local and international organisations assembled to display their latest technologies, commercial applications and solutions. Lectures are given by leading industry experts and users. The program enables company executives and other visitors to get acquainted with the latest advancements in the world of smart cards. The essence of the program is that the world of cards will be dominated by chip technology and that electronic purses will soon be available for us. The leading companies are bringing the latest technology into the region. The development process is characterised by the fact that technical experts are becoming the leading professionals, however economic expertise is also required.

With the motto ‘Together in the information society’ the John von Neumann Computer Science Society organised its 7^th national congress between 21 and 23 June in Eger.

In the course of the congress hall-marked by the patronage of István Stumpf, Ferenc Glatz and Kálmán Katona, well-known experts including scholars, information scientists, leaders of educational institutions and infocommunication companies exchanged ideas about socio-economic issues, achievements and dilemmas of the information society from information literacy to the latest developments and their effects on our lives.

A special information technology edition of the periodical titled Természet Világa was published on the occasion of the congress, which was created with the collaboration of the Computer Science Society.

The Congress also saw the Neumann prize giving ceremony of the year 2000 and the announcement of the result of the youth competition as well as the presentation of the city of the future imagined by the young.

John von Neumann Computer Science Society appeared as organiser and host, with IBM Hungary Ltd. as the main supporter.

The topic of the program which was held by the Internet Marketing Club operating within the National Marketing Association in the afternoon, 29 June in Hotel Erzsébet, Budapest was the Internet of the future.

Zoltán Csutorás, head of the department for Promoted Information Technology Developments of the Prime Minister's Office was speaking about the Internet through the eyes of an economic expert. Among the 175 million Internet users worldwide, the 600,000 Hungarian users can browse up to 2 million Hungarian Web pages. Zoltán Csutorás underscored the importance of the content of these pages and said that the Internet presence of the Hungarian public administration should back up the 12-year idea of a servicing state. Speaking about the social and economic sides of the risks, he also gave an account of the positive aspects.

The legislative approval concerning the issue of digital signatures in Hungary is expected by the end of this year. Regarding information technology, liveliness could be experienced during the previous three months on government level. The government currently is hiring experts to estimate the possible effects of Hungary’s accession to the Singapore Agreement.

Zoltán Csutorás confirmed that the Orbán-cabinet is determined to accelerate the Hungarian penetration of the Internet and boost the IT industry.

András Máth, researcher for Netsurvey Hungary analysed the data related to domestic Internet users from these days with retrospection on the previous three years. According to him, a stagnation can be experienced as for domestic Net use due to the low number of newcomer users. In his opinion, Internet education would be even more important in the future and online marketing experts would only rely on experienced Net users.

An International Internet Fair of Inventions called GENIUS 2000 organised by the Association of Hungarian Inventors (MAFE) was held on 30 June with its servicing background provided by MATÁVnet. The exhibition, which displays hundreds of inventions at www.inventor.hu, was opened by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at noon, 30 June, in an appropriate manner by sending an e-mail.

At the GENIUS 2000 exhibition you will be able to see the works of more than 300 inventors. These inventions were exhibited by the competitors of the Second Inventors Olympiad (Budapest, May 4-7, 2000). You can also see the inventions presented by the International Federation of Inventors' Associations (IFIA) at IFIS IFIA Internet Inventions Store. The exhibition is a virtual program in honour of the millenium organised for the first time in the world.

The threefold aim of the program is to promote the commercialisation of the inventions, contribute to an upward trend in creating power in the technical field and to encourage Internet use. The inventions displayed in the exhibition can be viewed according to the categorisation of the International Patent Classification. A detailed description is provided for each displayed work describing the problem targeted to solve by the invention, its definition, application, advantages, the phases of its development and the inventor. The exhibition is continuously expanding with newer and newer domestic and international inventions up until the end of this year.

The 8^th Infocommunications Conference titled ‘In the doorway of unlimited communication’ was held in Balatonberény from 30 August to 1 September. The main organiser of the program was the Hungarian Electronics and Informatics Association.

Summary of lectures: EHT and the related lawmaking; Distinct aim, common way toward the implementation of infocommunications services; Domestic development, manufacturing and distribution. Round table topics: the uniform communications act and the related legislation; Electromagnetic spaces and the living environment – what happened in a year?; Innovation, production, success of subcontractors.

5. Other

Two years after its establishment, the Internet library created with the collaboration of the Digital Literary Academy, the Petofi Literary Museum, the Contemporary Literary Centre and the János Neumann Digital Library can also be accessed via the Internet from 31 May. In the program initially called Digital Immortals’ Society and supported by the National Cultural Fund writers who were awarded the Kossuth prize until 1998 and still alive can participate (besides five posthumous immortals) – the society currently has fifty-one members. Out of the 419 works obtained by the Contemporary Literary Centre to publish 243 exists in digital form. www.irodalmiakademia.hu

Etnonet, the first Hungarian online journal to provide information and services to nationalities launches in the first week of June. Etnonet will follow the latest news and events of 13 minorities. The homepage will regularly make all inviting applications concerning the nationalities available, and will also publish all minutes and committee reports about nationalities in the parliament observer. www.etnonet.hu

Westel 900 Rt. opened its Enternet exhibition room in Vörösmarty square at the end of July, where on 300 square metres visitors can try the newest technologies of the world of telecommunications and information technology simultaneously with the world première. Ericsson, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, the partners collaborating in the establishment of Westel Mobil Rt. and the Enternet exhibition room formed a unique, irregular new communication room, which offers visitors to playfully view and try the latest technologies and applications all days of the week.

The applications exhibited in Enternet allowing any visitors to try them free including a Coca-Cola vending machine operating by mobile phones, an SMS wall, a GSM robot, VWAP-Beetle, a GPRS, a GSM network and telephone designing program, a one-armed WAP giant, a WAP biorhythm, a GSM Pro, WAP and voice activated camcorders playfully display the world standard technologies. A world-class video conference room situated upstairs in the exhibition room is suitable for organising virtual business conferences and meetings. Enternet also provides free Internet access and regular programs for the visitors. Other plans involve student games and competitions, Nobel Prize Winners Club videoconference series, talk show with well-known and less known participators and different professional forums.

The HUF14-billion investment in Harbor Park Logistics Centre in Budapest is in accord with the Széchenyi program as it connects traditional infrastructural developments with new electronic economic developments, said István Stumpf, minister of chancellery on the ceremonial occasion of laying the logistics base’s foundation stone on 3^rd August in Budapest.

The switching substation being built in the south-western gate of the capital city will not only be a traditional bridge-head in the future toward western and eastern countries, but it also possesses a key role in the developing electronic economy nowadays. The Internet commerce coming into prominence urges the creation of similar switching centres throughout the world, which enable orders transacted via the web to be easily fulfilled, according to the minister.

Ferenc Dobó, CEO of Crow Holdings, the company carrying out the tasks related to the developments, sales and operation of Harbor Park said the owners of the logistics centre are Lehman Brothers Investment Bank, Heitman International operating as a subsidiary of Heitman Financial L.L.C. real estate enterprise, Crow Holdings International Real Estate Investor and the Hungarian Wallis Real Estate Co. Ltd.

The 47-hectare-area park-like Harbor Park primarily intends to meet the needs of companies dealing with logistics, warehousing by creating modern lease-warehouses. 180,000 square metres of warehouses and offices will be established in the area of the base that is being established a few kilometres from the junction of the MO ring roadway to provide full range of services. Out of this, 15,000 square metres and two buildings will be handed over this year with the complete investment carried out in four years, officials said in the ceremony.

The National Children and Youth Parliament (OGYIP) launches a new Internet homepage from 15 August under the title Csakhogytudd.hu, where young people can hopefully find the right answer to all of the questions that concern them.