Hungarian administrative processes in the digital age

An attempt to a comprehensive examination

Abstract

In a world of sustainable development where digitalisation is among the priorities of all states, the question arises how digital Hungarian public administrative procedure is. The study aims to give an overall insight into the state of affairs in Hungary in individual cases and explore the level of digitalisation by exploring statistics on the clients’ habits on the usage of the available digital public service on one hand, just to see how it appears in their everyday, and the level of automatisation in decision-making on the other, from the aspect of the authority. As a result, when assessing the extent of digital public services in Hungary, the focus tends to concentrate on levels 1-3, and possibly level 4, of digital public services according to a five-stages chart settled as a goal by the European Union in 2002 and also used as reference in the Hungarian Act on e-public administrative services. Numbers demonstrate that the utilization of digital public services, despite their availability, is not as widespread among people as it could be. Also, the study enumerates the emergence of automated decision-making by establishing categories based on the examples found in the very few normative regulations to offer a picture of the status of digitalisation of the Hungarian administrative proceedings. While complete automation is still a distant goal, rapid technological advancements and innovations are pushing the legal framework to keep up.