Regional E-Government, or Electronic Government in the Field of Regional Administrative Tasks

Abstract

The study tries to introduce the tools of a new way of organizing public administration on the regional levei. After 1990, almost alt of the functions of regional public administration were passed onto the local level, leaving but a few ones on the regional levele, the level of the counties. Since then the central topic of the public administration reform is the regional administration, as Hungary does not have a NUTS 2 level working with independent self- governance. Many micro-regional institutions and many offices of the central government, having territorial authority, however, observes the borders of the counties, of which there are 19, answering the NUTS 3 levei according to EU nomenclature. The study suggests that the new institutional framework to be established for the regional administration ought to be the www, leaving the existing office and board network unchanged, causing the least tension with the reform. The new dimension in which the regional administration could work from an institutional point of view, could be the system of electronic government.

After an introduction to the present state of information communication technologies ín Hungary, a row of e-governmental tools are enlisted and described, how they could be used in regional public administration. Such devices are satellite images, geographical information system used in regional zoning, in decision.making, in land registry, e-voting, e-procurement, the system of telecommunication community houses, general positioning system, data banks and regional www portals, and interactive customer relationship management.