A K-Monitor álláspontja szerint egy demokratikusan működő közegben elszámoltatható politikusok dolgoznak átlátható intézményekben, őket civil csoportok ellenőrzik, számonkérik, támogatják, az állampolgároknak pedig megfelelő tájékoztatás után lehetőségük van becsatornázni a véleményüket a döntéshozatalba. Az új önkormányzati ciklus kezdetén egy konferenciára hívtunk ezek közül a szereplők közül minél többet, hogy beszéljük meg, hol tartunk most és mik a kívánatos irányok, illetve tanulhassunk egymástól.

In December 2022, European Union institutions suspended and tied to conditions Hungary’s access to EU funds under various procedures due to severe breaches of the rule of law and human rights. Ahead of the upcoming re-assessment by the Commission and the Council in the framework of the conditionality mechanism in December 2024, Hungarian civil society organisations looked at the steps the Hungarian government has taken to date to address the deficiencies identified by the Commission and the representatives of Member States in the Council.

Two years after the Hungarian government strengthened the institution of public consultation in October 2022, K-Monitor felt the need to analyse in more detail and depth how the practice of public consultation has changed after the reform. We conducted a similar analysis in May 2023.

Photo: Etactics Inc on Unsplash

Although Act CXXXI of 2010 on Public Participation in the Drafting of Legislation has included an obligation to involve the broader society and stakeholders in the drafting of legislation since its inception, the government has simply ignored the rules and in some cases even circumvented them (for example, by submitting significant bills to Parliament as individual motions by Fidesz and KDNP MPs). Instead of public consultation, they tried to gauge citizens' opinions through telephone opinion polls or national consultations with one-off messages.

Friss, 2023-as adatokkal frissítettük az önkormányzati bérlakásszektor számait bemutató interaktív honlapunkat. A Periféria Központtal indított közös projektünkben a nagyobb magyarországi önkormányzatok önkormányzati lakásaival kapcsolatos adatokat gyűjtöttük össze, a fél éve publikált 2016-2022 közötti adatsorokat most az elérhető legfrissebb, 2023-as számokkal bővítettük. Célunk, hogy az adatokhoz minél többen hozzáférjenek, és ezáltal minél nagyobb beleszólásunk lehessen egyszerű állampolgárként is a helyi lakásügyekbe.

Since the European Commission initiated the conditionality procedure against Hungary in 2022, several amendments have concerned the freedom of information framework. Over the past two years, K-Monitor has regularly reported on changes. Now, K-Monitor provides an overview of the amendments and compliance with the milestones agreed on by the Government and the European Commission.

 Forrás: Fortepan / Korenchy László

Now that Hungary is hosting the fifth summit of the European Political Community, we felt it our duty to showcase the country's attractions - not only the beautiful capital but also the developments across the countryside made possible thanks to the taxpayers of the European Union. So we updated our popular map of messed up EU projects, an alternative tourist guide to good governance in Hungary.

Since our last post, a wave of new EU funded investments has rolled in—ones that, if they’d never happened, might’ve done the Hungarian countryside a big favor. A more accurate statement, however, would be that unfortunately, there has been a considerable rise in projects whose proper use could have brought significant development to our towns and the lives of our communities, but self-interest and corruption have hindered this progress.

For example, it would be wonderful if the canopy walkway in Nyírmártonfalva had real tourist appeal, attracting visitors simply due to its unique elevated perspective, which could be a rarity on the Great Plain. Instead, it will stand unused for years in the middle of nowhere, as the trees surrounding the walkway were cut down during its construction—since the presence of trees around the walkway was not a requirement of the grant. Or imagine how much the quality of life for locals in Békés would improve if EU funds had been used wisely to finally solve the drainage issues—instead, after a medium rainfall, the town's puddles could host a pool party. Or think of the active recreation it could offer locals if the adventure park in Hatvan, built for 350,000 euros, was in operation. And who could really blame the mayor of Bácsszőlős for letting his brother-in-law move into the EU-funded service apartment for doctors? He has a point: there are indeed no doctors left in Hungary, so they don’t really need service apartments—it would be a shame if the house went unused.

Egyre kevesebbet tudni arról, hogy kik segítik napi szinten a kormány munkáját. Helyettesi államtitkári szint alatt csak szórványosan lehet találni információt arról, hogy kik dolgoznak a kormánynak. Arról pedig egyáltalán nem érhető el átfogó információ, hogy a kormánynak kik adnak tanácsot és mennyiért. Ezért a K-Monitor tavaly az összes minisztériumtól kikérte, kik és milyen összegért adnak tanácsot a kormánynak. A minisztériumok először úgy tettek, mintha nem értenék az adatigénylést, majd megtagadták a tanácsadók listájának kiadását. Ezt követően a K-Monitor a Nemzeti Adatvédelmi és Információszabadság Hatósághoz fordult, a hatóság pedig megerősítette: a politikai tanácsadók listáját nyilvánosságra lenne szükséges hozni.

K-Monitor’s news database for corruption and public funds has been an important tool for nearly two decades, enabling users to search articles about corruption cases and problematic public spending in Hungary. Until now, the processing of these articles has been carried out by dedicated volunteers who have meticulously monitored and tagged the content from various Hungarian news portals following a strict methodology. This database, which now contains over 50,000 articles, has been a crucial resource in training our new, AI-based press monitoring system. While we will continue to rely on our volunteer community, the development of the automated interface has made their work much easier.

What makes the K-Monitor database unique is its consistent tagging system, which helps users quickly find information related to specific public fund or corruption stories, whether it concerns individuals, institutions, topics, or locations. Manual data entry is time-consuming, so it became necessary to develop an automated solution—this demand fueled our experiment to enhance the process with a language model-based development.

The first operational version of the new system retrieves news articles from the RSS feeds of online newspapers, extracting content from the web pages. Our algorithms then standardize the extracted data, perform some error filtering, and finally, a BERT language model, trained for classification, decides whether the article fits the methodology of the news database. If it does, the article is presented for approval to our monitoring volunteers.

Currently, we monitor nearly 100 Hungarian online news sources, with our system reviewing around 3,000 articles daily.

Automation doesn't stop at identifying articles and classifying them according to our methodology; we have also focused on recognizing individuals, institutions, and locations mentioned within the articles. The algorithm identifies named entities in the text and is (to some extent) able to recognize whether they are active participants in the described events or merely passive characters or narrators of the story. If a person or institution appears in a relevant context, the new system suggests tagging the entity for our monitors who record the article. This solution greatly enhances the accuracy and efficiency of the article tagging process.

During development, we faced challenges, particularly in fine-tuning the language models to the peculiarities of the Hungarian language, improving the accuracy of automatic context recognition, and detecting articles that have been copied or come from news agencies. Beyond the successful developments so far, there is still much potential for further improvement of the system. Future plans include expanding the role of artificial intelligence to recognize tags describing the circumstances of the articles and files grouping cases, storing data about the authors, and grouping similar articles.

Automation is a long-term project that not only makes the work of our volunteers easier but also ensures more reliable and comprehensive content for users. Feel free to contact us at info@k-monitor.hu if you have any suggestions or you’re working on a similar project.

The 2024 development, in addition to the work of K-Monitor's staff, was also supported by pro bono IT assistance from Spreadmonitor. We are incredibly grateful to them and to our volunteers and team members who have worked on the database.

Két évvel azután, hogy a magyar kormány 2022 októberében az Európai Bizottság nyomására megerősítette a társadalmi egyeztetés intézményét, ismét szükségét éreztük annak, hogy a részletesebben, mélyebbre ásva is elemezzük, hogyan változott meg Magyarországon a társadalmi egyeztetés gyakorlata. Legutóbb 2023 májusában végeztünk hasonló elemzést. 

Fotó: Etactics Inc on Unsplash

News continues to emerge about the government's efforts to address the systemic issues in healthcare. Yet, waiting lists keep growing, severe resource shortages persist, and the private sector—operating with a lack of transparency—continues to expand. Citizens would likely have a clearer understanding of these developments if the Boston Consulting Group’s secret study that forms the basis of the government’s healthcare reform, were made public. K-Monitor has been fighting to make the document public since 2021. K-Monitor has now turned the matter to the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

Photo: Fortepan / Urbán Tamás