Abstract
The Hungarian Central Governmental Service Bus (Központi Kormányzati Szolgáltatás Busz – KKSzB) is an Interoperability Platform that aims to ensure a service-oriented and standardized connection between the national base registries and the different specific public administration information systems. This is achieved through unification of the communication methods.
EIF and Interoperability matching
The following EIF recommendations fit well the project :
- Administrative simplification: the access to the needed data is guaranteed to the citizens or a businesses in a modernized and efficient way through the coordination of the system (see the „benefits and results” chapter). A list of 20+ eServices is made available to the citizens and businesses via the platform;
- Once-only principle and user centricity in general: the relevant data are extracted directly from the national base registries and the users don’t need to provide them several times;
- Base registries: the project starts from the implementation of the base registries, which are the core of the development of several e-services through their communication system. The new Platform publishes and aggregates them according to the new EIF recomendations. They represent at their relevant level the official sources of information consultable by Citizens, business and public administrations.
Policy context
Implementation of e-Government is in progress for years in Hungary, with one of the core area being to simplify and unify the administration processes and to facilitate the collaboration of authorities dealing with electronic administration.
KKSzB makes it possible to connect systems with different technological, operational and integrational levels, as well as to reduce redundant data storage and data-integrity errors resulting from this practice. KKSzB ensures the electronic communication, interoperability and secure data exchange of authentic data among the public administrative authorities.
In case of the implementation of eGovernment based on the interoperability of the cooperating authorities:
- all data of the citizens and businesses stored by the public administration in the base registries can be transferred from the primary authentic source via simple or automated data transfer;
- the cooperating authorities using the services of the KKSzB are able to reach different services by using this standardized solution, under the same conditions;
- due to the cooperation between the public administration systems based on a standardized solution, the transparency, flexibility and service level of the cooperation can increase.
KKSzB as a service
It is possible to join KKSzB “as a service” or using a more classic “client oriented application”, which makes it technically possible for the applications targeted to citizens and businesses connected to the KKSzB to reach all those services that are also provided by the connected service providers via KKSzB, when having the required permission to do so.
Service providers get the same advantages by joining the KKSzB, since all their published services can be reached by other already joined citizens or businesses. This doesn’t require any additional actions – software development, authentication issues or physical connection building – on the service provider side. The KKSzB connected service providers only task is to allocate resources to deal with citizens’ or businesses’ permission requests before starting to provide the given service.
The legal framework that stands over the implementation of the base registries is composed by the Act no. CCXXII. of 2015 on general rules of electronic administration and trust services and to the Government Decree 451/2016 on the detailed rules of electronic administration.
Description of target users and groups
Although KKSzB is a governmental service, it will not be available for governmental institutions only. Other organizations and the private sector can also benefit from it. The next step is allow banks, telecommunication companies, public utilities etc. to connect to KKSzB and ensure the reliable operation of their services by using unified electronic data transfer solutions. But private Citizens remain the most important final users and beneficiaries of the KKSzB, which develops consequently many e-services dedicated to them.
Description of the way to implement the initiative
The pilot period has been started on 31th March 2017 by publishing two already existing e-government services on KKSzB (the registry of private entrepreneurs and the registry of parking permits). The trial was successful for both services.
Another ten main base registries maintained by the Ministry of Interior have been connected to the KKSzB in October 2017 and were available for testing since then, after finishing the test period, their launch is expected in second half of December 2017.
The government’s aim is to launch the KKSzB interoperability platform from January 2018 on with a total of 27 important base registries to be connected to the platform throughout 2018, and providing their information transfer and data exchange services to the connected Citizens and businesses. Most of these base registries will also connect to the service during 2018 according to the legal framework mentioned above.
There is already a total of 24 services available through the secured Hungarian Service Bus (login/password required to access), and more added on a frequent basis. They cover different type of registries: various content management solutions (from storage to transfer service), practical e-services such as eIdentification/eSignature or ePayment, and Registries. Each service is made available with its necessary accompanying documentation (legal framework, target of the service, user guides and technical specifications).
The KKSzB is online from 1 January 2018, creating the possibility to replace today’s “spiderweb-like” architecture in the domain of communication between base registries and specific sectoral systems, and the possibility to establish such kind of new connections in a much easier way. The registries connected will be made available through the KKSzB technical interoperability platform from January 2018. On the other side, most of the Public Administration stakeholders are expected to connect to the KKSzB throughout 2018 according to their own ongoing development projects.
Governance
To achieve this goal, connecting these registers to the test environment and supporting the system developers in testing is a continuous and priority task at the moment.
The leading and coordination of the project is on the hands of the Ministry of Interior, which has created an ad hoc agency, IdomSoft Ltd. – a 100% state-owned company under the Ministry of Interior. IdomSoft acts as the developer and service provider of KKSzB. It provides continuous and high-level support to the connecting parties in their administrative and technical issues.
The other relevant ministries (e.g. the one of Economics, of Justice etc.) are also invited to collaborate since many registries stand below their competency.
Technology solution
The figure below shows the logical connection between the provider’s service and the client’s application via the bus. The application connects to the KKSzB gateway to reach the service. The authentication of the application request
- happens at the KKSzB gateway by sending a message to the System Authentication Register
- As a first step the validity of the message is checked, then the interface’s permission is verified by the Register. In case of success, the service becomes available for the citizen or business
Main results, benefits and impacts
The newly established data connection and information exchange solutions provided by the KKSzB regarding the national base registries – along with the government’s guarantee – result in the possibility of introducing a more convenient and modern electronic administration. This innovation aims to reducing the citizens’ administrative burdens. Since via the KKSzB interoperability platform the authorities are able to access all required data electronically, the citizen or business does not need to provide or prove them when it is already stored in the authentic base registries, thus the introduction and use of KKSzB will be an important step towards the implementation of the once-only principle in Hungary.
Moreover from a practical point of view it is another main benefit that the KKSZB itself manages the identification and access permissions. Therefore the development of identification and access permission solutions on an application level will not be necessary any more neither on the clients’ nor on the service providers’ side. As connecting to the KKSzB Gateway is a one-time action, the citizen or business will have access to all services they are entitled to use without implementing any further solution for identification or establishing any new system connections.
Lessons learnt and best practices
The project benefit of the coordination of the different ministries in a well-defined and structured governance.
Further details of the service are available on a central governmental webportal available after registration for the Hungarian public administration bodies that want to connect to the CGSB and use its services. This latter webpage is not accessible for the public, but the civil servants of the public administration bodies concerned can register from their workplace, and then they can access all the information needed on how to connect to and use the services. Since this portal is already live the civil servants can already have internal trainings and get familiar to the new procedures once the registries to which they are working on will be connected to the network.
