National
Development Agency

Setting up so-called ASP centres required for providing on-line single window local government administrative services in all 7 regions in Hungary can now get underway. Seven local governments with substantial experience in the operation of e-local government services, which will function as the hosts of these regional centres, have been selected from among 13 applicants. Once settlements are connected to these ASP centres to be set up by the second half of next year, it will also be possible to process some 250 official procedures administered by local governments via the Internet. 

The Internet is increasingly present in our life; today, we not only read the news on the World Wide Web, but listen to the radio, watch television, shop and do our banking via the Internet. Moreover, most people now even submit tax declarations electronically. However, local governments still need to carry out major developments in the domain of so-called e-services offered via the Internet. There is still much to be developed in this area in the case of official papers processed through document offices and local governments.  

Developing e-local government services and their wide-spread dissemination is an obligation stipulated by both Hungarian and European Union legislation; moreover, this constitutes an essential precondition for making public administration more efficient. Major savings can be made in the work of local governments through the introduction of electronic services, which is why resources dedicated to developing e-administration will return in the budget of municipalities. This is why this EU-funded scheme was created, the fundamental aim of which involves setting up so-called ASP centres making e-administration services available for a wide scope of local governments. As an outcome of these developments, a wide range of electronic local government services will be accessible for citizens and enterprises via these centres. 

The first step involved selecting local governments where such centres using IT applications, such as, social, tax, financial, document processing and child-welfare IT systems can be set up in the seven regions in Hungary as a part of the programme aimed at developing regional public administration and administrative IT systems. As an outcome of this call, the local government of Szeged, Pécs, Debrecen, Miskolc, Székesfehérvár, Érd and Szombathely were selected as ASP-centre hosts. 1.5 billion HUF, most of which is funding granted by the EU, can be invested in each region to set up these centres and link municipal local governments to this network.

The development of regional ASP centres is expected to be completed by the second half of 2011, after which municipal local governments will be able to connect to this network, for which EU funding will also be provided at a high intensity rate, ranging between 15 and 85 million HUF per application, depending on the size of the given municipality. As an outcome of this programme, it will be possible to process documents electronically via a single window system in the case of some 250 official procedures administered by local governments.

Applicants approved funding under the call "Development of regional public administration and public administration IT systems"