Assessment and recommendations

The State Territorial Administration Reform1 (STAR) was primarily triggered by a largely shared diagnosis of the weaknesses, inefficiencies and bottlenecks in the organisation of the Hungarian public administration at all levels of government. In particular, the public administration lacked stability, predictability and certainty of uniform due process across the country and among all administrative actors involved in policy formulation, regulatory decision making and public service delivery. This situation was perceived to have been aggravated by a number of factors, including the absence of a single public administration reform strategy at the central level, a lack of transparency in the structure and functioning of the territorial state administration, and significant disparities in the standards and quality of public services between more advanced and less-developed regions.