Management Information System - Decision support in public administration. Case study of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office

Above a certain size of the organization, whether private or public, the decision making level of the management requires “digested” information to receive support in the form of exact and relevant data or reports. These data are a reflection of the most important strategic and operational elements of the specific organization, giving an overview of the activities and results of planning, production, marketing, sales, customer relations, cash flow etc. depending on the core activity of the company. The quality of these data is of the utmost importance, since the top management of large organizations derives its high level decisions mostly from such “digests” instead of going down in the depth of the core activity components. As the supporting Information Technology went through a significant development during the last decades, and business intelligence solutions were developed, more and more attention was drawn to these technologies in the private sector’s companies and large or central public administration institutions as well. The article displays a brief case study of the design and implementation of such a management information system (MIS) in the Hungarian Central Statistical Office in detail. The implemented system had to comply with several expectations, where some of them were specified for public administration. As the daily application of an MIS is still rare in Hungarian public administration, the efforts of the office were almost exclusively based on international good practices and the definition of our own needs.