Hungary’s central government wants to reduce its dependency on a handful of IT vendors. To begin with, a decision taken last week aims to reduce the use of a proprietary office productivity suite by 60 % in 2020. The government also wants to improve its procurement of IT solutions in order to create business opportunities for small and medium-sized companies.

In May, the government decided to increase its use of open source software. The decision that was adopted last week adds concrete targets and actions.

The Minister of Interior is responsible for the open source action plan, and it is to involve NHIT, the National Council for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and NISZ, the state-owned National Information and Communication Services provider.

Document templates

For all future ICT procurement related to eGovernment, the ministry is to make sure that solutions are platform-independent. Additionally, the ministry, NHIT and NISZ should create a standard open source-based PC desktop software configuration for all of the ministries and central government departments, including operating system, office productivity tools, an email client, and a web browser. The three should also come up with a standard government document template repository.

Starting in 2017, the government will provide a HUF 186 million (about EUR 600,000) budget for an ‘Open Source Software Support Group’ - a government open source resource centre, to be part of NISZ. NHIT and NISZ should work on promotion and create training material to help public administrations with the transition.

The Prime Minister’s Office and the National University of Public Service will monitor progress.

More information:

The 1604/2016 (XI. 8.) Hungarian government decision on open source software (in Hungarian)

OSOR news item