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Open
standards have been made mandatory for the IT systems of Hungary's
public administrations. The Hungarian parliament voted in favour of
amendments prescribing open standards, to a law on electronic
government services, on 14 December [2009]. The changes received 197
votes in favour, one against and 146 abstentions, according to the Open
Standard Alliance, a Hungarian advocacy group that lobbied for the
amendments.
The changes to
the law intend to make the public eServices accessible to all, by
prescribing the use of IT standards that are publicly accessible and
without any restrictions such as royalties. "This is just the
first step, a lot remains to be done", commented the Open Standards
Alliance on its website. "But we dare rejoice." Explaining the
amendments, the Alliance compares open standards to wall sockets for
the electricity grid. "Any device using a standard plug can be
connected to the electric power supply by means of a wall socket.
Connecting a television set or a refrigerator to the mains does not
require the expertise of an electrician. And if the refrigerator is
unplugged and a television plugged in instead, the television will
work, too. Similarly, the two types of portal set out by Hungarian
legislation, the administrative portal and the client portal serving
individual users, will function as statutory standard sockets in
intercommunication between computers." These standards governing
connection to the sockets are public, the Alliance add. "Anybody can
set up an information socket: the specifications of the portals of the
central system are public, anybody can access them free of charge." "We
are all quite excited about this law", said László Kürti, CEO of an
Hungarian open source IT service provider. He expects that the law will
help his and similar open source specialists. "Unfortunately, it does
not mention any dates by which public adminstrations need to start
using open standards, nor are there any sanctions for those that don't,
but it is a good start."
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