‘Government Windows’: One-Stop Shops for Administrative Services in Hungary

Abstract

The public administration reform program called the Magyary Program (Ministry of Public Administration and Justice, 2011) was initiated in 2010. An important component of the program was the establishment of so-called Government Offices in the capital city of Budapest and in the 19 counties. The newly created Government Offices, strictly controlled both administratively and politically by the central government, put an end to two decades of struggle between the core administration, surrounding the prime minister, and the diverse set of special and general administration services controlled by specialized agencies and ministries. A subsequent step in the public administration reform — strongly linked to setting up an integrated administrative system on the intermediate level — was the initiation of integrated service centres representing the different specialized public organizations that had been merged into the Government Offices. In 2011, the integrated service contact centres called Government Windows started to operate as the front offices of the newly created Government Offices. At this first phase of the larger project, 29 Government Windows were established (one to four per county). Some months later, in addition to the initial 30 types of administrative services offered by the new one-stop shops, another 31 were added to their profile. In 2014, during the second phase of the project, the establishment of about 300 one-stop shops on the lower district level is foreseen.