KIKERES: the Hungarian National Public Administration Metadata Service Zsolt Sikolya Prime Minister’s Office Office of the Government Commissioner fo ICT

Public Resources of Information Public sector organizations hold a huge amount of information, which is a key resource in the information society. One of the necessary conditions to make good use of this resource is to have an up-to-date registry of what information resources are available in public offices.

Legislative Background 1. The Act XX. of year 1994: The Constitution of the Hungarian Republic 61. § (1) In the Hungarian Republic every one has the right … to learn and to distribute the data of public interest.

Legislative Background 2. Act LXIII. of year 1992 about the protection of personal data and the publicity of data of public interest: 19. § (1)-(2) The organizations carrying out state or local duties as well as other organizations bearing public tasks … make the data about their data types … public, or make them accessible in other ways.

Problems do not know where and what kind of data are accessible; the existing data treasury is unexploited; the same data are produced in multiple locations; the interpretation of concepts related to data is not known in an exact manner.

International Aspects USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand: GILS (Governmental Information Locator System) USA: it is required to publish metadata about the data sources of federal authorities The Green Book of Commission about the public sector information: “it is unavoidable to set up such metadata servicing systems, which help the information users to find their ways about the data mass of public administration” EU: sectoral metadata service projects (environment protection, geology, mapping data, etc.)

Hungarian Situation Recognizing the problems in 1999 the Interministerial Committee for Information Technology (ICIT), Prime Minister’s Office and the Data Management Technical Committee of the ICIT, decided the setup of a public administration data registry (metadata service) and launched the KIKERES project. As a result of an open call for tenders, the Scriptum Inc. was contracted to implement the system.

The Goals of KIKERES a better understanding of data of public interest a better utilization of the data treasury of the public administration reducing the multiple data management the designability of the data management

KIKERES: metadata+concepts According to its simplest definition the metadata are data about data. They describe the content, representation, quality, status, the spatial and temporal extension of validity, accessibility and other characteristics of the data. The metadata help find, interpret and utilize the data. Thus metadata resemble the library catalogue cards. Practically the KIKERES is the catalogue of the public information asset, to which a catalogue of concepts is also connected. There are different type of metadata: discovery, technical, etc. The KIKERES supports the discovery type metadata. The manufacturer and the user of the metadata shall use the same conceptual system.

The Main Characteristics of the KIKERES a governmental information locator system (GILS) a “discovery-type” metadata service accessible for anybody on the Internet free of charge a distributed system: each data host is hosting its own metadata it can be used as an institutional data catalogue an expandable metadata-structure for different data it is based on international standards (Dublin Core, XML/RDF, etc. Hungarian and English interface and content (optional) its precedent is the METATÉR system: with approximately records of spatial metadata

Concept Store a structured terminological data base concepts, definitions, word forms, relations, annotations in subject-field distribution the manufacturers and users of metadata are able to use the same conceptual system accessible to every one on the internet ( available for other information systems multilingual: helping the preparation to join the EU (transferring the concepts of the EU legal materials)

1113/2000. (XII. 27.) Governmental Act about the public administration data management: metadata of public sector information resources and related terms setting up framework sytems (software development, central servers): PMO, January 31, 2001 initial data uploading in the central administration: PMO + ministries, June 30, 2002 continuous operation: PMO + ministries voluntary join of other institutions carrying out public duties financing of initial upload (3.6 M EUR), central operation, organization, methodological support, information: PMO