Social responsibility

A Government Assessment System, e-GAMES

The World Bank has started supporting initiatives whose aim is to involve citizens and civil society organizations in strengthening governments’ responsibility.

In the period between 28-29 March, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the World Bank organized a workshop on exchange of information and knowledge for social responsibility in Europe and Central Asia. Several successful examples were shared at the workshop. In this and the following two issues of the Civic World we will present some of them, originating from the region.  

In order to promote interaction between citizens and public administration and to enable assessment and measurement of the public administration’s work, since 2004 the Hungarian government has established a sophisticated internet forum called e-GAMES (e-GAMES – e – Government Assessment, Measuring and Evaluation System), integrated in the governmental internet portal. In order to use the forum, the citizens access the governmental web-portal and register themselves. To provide the most appropriate service, rules have been defined for its use:

-         The users must not be anonymous and have to identify with their real names. This ensures that the users are aware that the forum is a form of participation management and obliges them to be responsible for the contents of their contributions;
-         The users can assess the submitted comments with positive and negative points, submitting an appropriate explanation. Adding the points and explanations provides a picture of the public opinion in terms of a certain issue;
-         The number of points and explanations to a certain issue forms an index of its popularity;
-         When an external moderator of the debates is provided, they are always public and on-line;
-         Civil servants can be users, but they cannot comment the given opinions.

A legal framework has carefully been defined for functioning of the forum in order to provide balance of protection of data and freedom of expressing.

VIP (such as high representatives of the public administration and politicians) are regularly invited to be available on the citizens’ line at previously fixed time. Their replies during these sessions can also be evaluated by the users.

For realization of this initiative no special budget funds are determined, but the existing resources are used as for the governmental portal. On the other hand, the users themselves do not have any big costs, except for providing internet access and register. With the registration they regularly get informed about the forthcoming debates and can take part in them.

The forum is a simple and available governmental tool to take into consideration the citizens’ worries. It helps in determining the priorities of the governmental policy. The link to the forum is: www.magyarorszag.hu/parbeszed_egames.html.  

The World Bank defines social responsibility as an access to improving the government’s openness and responsibility, relying on civic engagement where the citizens or civil society organizations take part directly or indirectly in establishing responsible practices. It implies, for example: civil participation in public policy, participation budgeting, independent budget analysis, public consumption monitoring, public services monitoring, civic counseling committees etc.