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In this paper, we explore how Civilization, and – in a more general approach – computer games can enhance public administration (PA) education for interpreting technology-society concepts (or Science Technology Studies). We pose the research question, how computer games at the early stage of PA studies aligned with systematic curriculum design make educational experiences and the learning process more sensitised to system complexity, creativity and understanding the role of technology. The paper shows an educational experiment where Sid Meier’s Civilization series is used at the University of Public Service in Budapest. Civilization is one of the most famous turn-based strategy games, illustrating the complex causalities of economic development, geographical expansion, technology innovation, government structure and warfare. The players experience historical development through the ages of human Civilization – starting to build simple ancient huts to modern space exploration – and choosing different strategies to guide their Civilization through the challenges of allocating resources, managing conflicts, or deploying technological innovations. Civilization has been used in several classroom experiences for teaching history and complex system analysis.

The objective of this paper is to show how system dynamics modelling can be applied to simulate the behavior of information communication technology based platforms to formulate and validate strategies or development policies of these platforms in the public sector. Typical platforms in the domain of public sector for instance are mobile apps connecting the sides of users and developers, or horizontal or vertical government portals connecting different authorities on one side and users or corporations on the other side. We show in our contribution how system dynamics provides new insights for modelling two-sided markets in general and public ICT platforms in particular. Conclusions and results of our work are mainly theoretical: as an initial step we extended the classic microeconomic equilibrium models mainly concerned with how to determine pricing of the opposing sides into more general parameters of platform quality, externalities and causality analysis of different variables. Based on these theoretical models we suggest simple inference to policy making and some pragmatic decisions in connections with public ICT platforms.

The evaluation of scientific publication performance has become one of the most important and, at the same time, one of the most debated issues in international academic circles. This problem is attenuated by the digital transformation of science; online repositories, indexing systems and online visibility have become key enablers of evidence-based assessments of publication performance. In our paper we examine the scientific publication performance of 2131 members of the public body of the IX. Department of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences As its members represent the diversity of Hungarian social sciences very well, it was possible to make a broader generalization about their achievements regarding their publication performance. We found that one third of this sample has an internationally visible presence in the Repository of Hungarian Scientific Artefact (RHSA) database, which is the central repository that provides data for scientific promotion and assessment. By running a two-step cluster analysis, we could identify five typical clusters of scientists based on their publications – each of them focusing on a different outlet such as books, domestic journals, international journals, or a balanced publication strategy that focuses on all the former types. In contrast to previous findings concerning technology acceptance, we found that the younger generation of Ph.Ds often adopt to the use of RHSA less than more senior individuals that have higher academic positions.

Doctoral training was included in the Bologna system as the third cycle. The important consequence of this change is that the doctoral studies became more structured, and most universities now train doctors in a shorter time period than in the past, mostly in 3 to 4 years. The National Association of PhD students from Serbia (Doktoranti Srbije) conducted the same survey in the form of a questionnaire three years in a row (2010-2012). In 2010 the survey received 335 responses, in 2011 there were 557 responses and in 2012 there were 625. The survey results showed that doctoral candidates recognise supervision as a key issue that need to be improved. Surveyed individuals emphasised the impact of the supervisor’s engagement on the quality of their PhD projects. Supportiveness is the quality that PhD students value the most. This involves supervisors being encouraging, and aware that students' lives extend beyond the PhD. Other key areas for improvement, according to Serbian PhD candidates, are financing and mobility, especially international mobility.

A kormanyzas, a kozigazgatas, illetve a kozszolgaltatas digitalis transzformacioja tobb ok miatt is aktualis tema a vezetestudomany teruleten. Amikor a szerkesztőkkel ennek a tematikus szamnak a koncepciojat kidolgoztuk egyreszt a nemzetkozi trendekre es diskurzusokra igyekeztunk alapozni, masreszt annak az elmeleti munkanak, kutatasi aktivitasnak is teret igyekeztunk biztositani, amely a Kozigazgatas Fejlesztesi Operativ Programhoz (KOFOP), vagy akar mas kozigazgatasi modernizacios kezdemenyezesekhez kapcsolodik.

E-government development in most European countries was ensured from Structural Funds in the period of 2007-2014. In our paper we show how Hungary has used these funds in order to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in its public services. The main objective of our research has been to explore the budgetary and timing characteristics of public ICT spending, and analyze the implicit and explicit objectives of eGovernment projects in Hungary. We applied exploratory text analyzes as a novel and objective way to analyze the focus of eGovernment development policy. Our main findings are: - After the text analysis of 85 Electronic Public Administration Operational Programme (EPAOP) and 65 State Reform Operational Programme (SROP) projects we found that keyword statistics are generally consistent with the main policy level objectives of the Operative Programmes, however there are some fields which are not emphasized, such as: the role of participation, social partners, local-government; and the improvement need of user skills through public information campaigns. - Governmental changes are clearly reflected in the goal hierarchy: contracting in EPAOP and SROP happened in two separate waves - the significant part of financing was committed during stabilized governments in the beginning and end phase of the planning period, with a relatively passive period during governmental change in 2010-2011.