Perspective: Government Heuristics in Central and Eastern Europe: IT Spending and Institutional Mindsets

In December 2008, the Slovak government (through the Ministry of Finance) entered a volume license agreement with Microsoft for more than 53,000 licenses. Last year, the ministry reported to IDC that this number had risen to more than 83,000. It is important to note that the total number of government employees did not significantly change, nor did the total number of employees using Microsoft products.

What did change was the way the license was administered. Rather than government organizations negotiating a deal for themselves, the Ministry of Finance's department for the informatization of society brokered the deal on behalf of the participating agencies. The department has also taken on the role of allocating funding to ministries and agencies and working with legislation to ensure consistency of terms and goals.

What the Slovak government has not done is set up the kind of eservices and document delivery system implemented by Poland and the Czech Republic. Nor has Slovakia set up a central body for IT auditing, like Hungary plans to do. Nor is Slovakia requiring that all government agencies adopt open source software, as the central authorities in Russia and Hungary are.

At some level, all of these actions reflect a centralized effort to improve IT in government in their respective countries - either with regards to technology or cost. Perhaps more importantly, these top-down programs provide insight into the manner and mindset with which different federal governments approach IT.