Based on last year’s experience, many high school students only became familiar with open source software such as Linux, LibreOffice, or the Apache web server application in preparation for the competition, as they do not receive emphasis on secondary education. A novelty was that a higher education category was also created this year. In connection with the competition we talked to Károly Hajzer , Undersecretary of State for Information Technology, about the use of open source software in public administration

Computerworld: Why did the Ministry of the Interior and NISZ add a higher education category to the competition this year?
Károly Hajzer: After last year’s successes, we felt it was necessary to involve a wider range of young people in the competition, which serves both educational goals and the promotion of open source systems, as well as the forging of friendly companies preparing for the competition. Of course, all of this also provides an opportunity to meet young people who are about to enter the labor market.

CW: Completed by the initiative
HK: We feel yes. We met a lot of talented young people for whom the competition was a competition and the tasks were a pleasure. Our goals have also been fulfilled to the maximum, as we have managed to promote open source applications that have been operating in an island-like way so far: video conferencing systems, office packages, appointment booking applications, chat programs. Among the competitors, we also met young people who will be offered an internship or job opportunity.

CW: What is the current role of the open competition? source code solutions in the Hungarian public administration?
HK: Some software serves users from the background and others can be encountered in their daily activities. In public administration, almost all of our servers run on an open source operating system, and often our database management and word processing applications are also open source software. Where possible, these can be used to replace significantly more expensive closed source applications.

CW: Why do they trust that open standards are becoming more widespread?
HK: Primarily because these software they will get better and more mature from year to year. Secondly, economic coercion is also an important consideration. However, open source applications allow costs to be minimized.

CW: Which states are most active in this type of public administration development?
HK : Hungary is one of the leading states in terms of the use of free software. We build our server park on free software and cloud applications, but the monitoring system is also open source, thus ensuring vendor neutrality. This will certainly be the case in other countries, but we will not collect data on this.

CW: Is there an example that the administrative products of Hungarian developers are used by other European Member States
HK: Despite the cooperation, exchange of data and technology, each state tries to stand on its own two feet, to rely on its own developers . We also hand over our own solutions, but public administration is an area that is highly dependent on the legal order of a given state. Although EU efforts are calling for unification, they need to adapt to different property, family or, for example, land law regulations in each country. And the procedures always start with identification. Hungary has a world-class personal identification system, which has overtaken the neighboring countries in time. Although we would like to pass this knowledge on to others, as each country builds on its own basic register, such transport is unlikely to take place in public administration. There are, of course, examples of applications such as route logs being used uniformly around the world. However, public administration systems cannot be unified in the same way that financial institutions do not take over each other’s solutions, despite the fact that they are the same in principle.

The development team in the field of source code systems has also achieved groundbreaking success in developing applications and exploring interoperability bugs in recent years. The version of the software package developed by NISZ Zrt. Is already available all over the world.

Our article is available at Computerworld 2021/9.

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