February 7th, 2011

Government to build customer-friendly administration, says deputy PM

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The government is working to make Hungary’s public administration a service-based system which taxpayers are happy with by the end of the parliamentary cycle in 2014, Deputy Prime Minister Tibor Navracsics said on Friday.

Navracsics, who is also minister of justice and public administration, met staff members of regional authorities in Eger (N), and said that the government would eliminate the “jungle of institutions” that developed during the past 20 years.

The government wants to introduce public administration career models before the end of 2011 to ensure efficient and high quality operations in the long run, Navracsics said.

The question is not whether we need “more state or less state but if that is a good state or a bad one,” he said. The deputy premier argued that public administration must clearly be a set of services for citizens, received in return for their taxes otherwise people will be alienated from democracy.

Navracsics said it was important to ensure that citizens’ encountering public administration should not be a frustrating experience, and added that the new “government windows” were a key tool to that end.

The deputy PM later told reporters that over 21,000 citizens had contacted the single-window administration system since its introduction on January 1.

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5 Comments

  1. justasking says:
    February 7, 2011 at 5:53 pm

    “it was important to ensure that citizens’ encountering public administration should not be a frustrating experience”
    Would they also be taught that the occasional smile would not crack their faces?

  2. Leto says:
    February 7, 2011 at 6:03 pm

    Well, actually it was a very pleasant surprise for me when I had some business in one of the newly setup “government offices” recently. The whole thing took only a few minutes (I had expected to spend at least an hour there, based on previous experiences) and the clerks were very polite and smiling all the way. As if it wasn’t Hungary. :)

  3. justasking says:
    February 7, 2011 at 6:10 pm

    @ Leto,
    Well, miserable public sector workers aren’t exclusive to Hungary…

  4. Leto says:
    February 7, 2011 at 6:15 pm

    I know but my standards aren’t Rumania where I could see much more miserable ones than in Hungary. :)

  5. Viking says:
    February 8, 2011 at 12:29 am

    The deputy premier argued that public administration must clearly be a set of services for citizens, received in return for their taxes otherwise people will be alienated from democracy
    —
    And of course we are not thinking about the real experience in Orbanistan, were you have to queue for hours to sign a paper *in person to claim wait is yours*
    If you did not do that in the few office hours allotted, The Great Leader stole your pension savings
    “But He did it with a Smile on His face!”
    So reassuring for our resident brown-nose