The Polish public administration has been undergoing computerization for over a dozen years; new tenders are being announced, and new IT systems are being created to support the operation of Polish offices, or more precisely, to make the contact between a petitioner and a Polish official more efficient. One could go as far as to say that SOMETHING is always happening, work is underway to create IT systems thanks to which the Polish administration is supposed to work more efficiently, faster, and to the benefit of us, the citizens, as well as the office employees themselves. However, the actions taken so far in this area have not brought the expected benefits; every large (on a national scale), newly implemented system, instead of working correctly, refused (at least in the initial months of operation) to function properly. This was the case with the computerization of the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS), the now-defunct Health Insurance Funds – currently the National Health Fund (NFZ), and the system supporting new identity cards. A similar situation also occurred during the implementation of the CEPIK system and the POJAZD system. Several more examples could be cited. Everyone (not just IT industry specialists and officials) is wondering why no system works correctly, whether the fault lies with the people designing these systems, or with the public administration, which perhaps does not fully know what it needs and how it should really work? Or perhaps this state of affairs is caused by a lack of legal regulations, including the Act on Computerization? Of course, these are important questions, but the most important problem is the lack of interoperability, and all discussions about the computerization of public administration should start with this concept.
The article comes from the magazine “e-Fakty” 3/2005.