PIR (Financial Information System)

Financial Information System

PMSZK-PSZTI

1969-1995

László Háklár (director, head of development)

Csaba Gergely (technical vicedirector)

Mrs. Lajos Apátfalvi, Endre Bobok, Péter Farkas, Pál Jánosi, Sándor Keresztes, Gabriella Koncz, Mrs. Attila Koronczy, Ferenc Nonn, Mrs. Gyula Pálfi, Mrs. Róbert Peller, Mrs. István Pintér, Mrs. Imre Póti, Mrs. Zoltán Szabó, János Tarnai, Péter Török, Antal Udvardy, Róbert Villányi.

Ministry of Finance

APEH (since its establishment in 1987)

Central Bank of Hungary, Hungarian Chamber of Commerce, Hungarian Chamber of Commerce

county governments

The information system of the central and county self-government subsystems of the public finance. One of the information systems of the public administration, with the largest IT asset base in the country at that time, a modularly organized system oriented towards supporting macro-level financial management. It transformed the data characterizing financial-economic processes and the developed “states” into information serving the functional, sectoral and territorial goals of macro-level management. While it was continuously improved through modular construction, the system, which was gradually expanding in this way, was operated and used in parallel with the development.

In the logical structure of the PIR's operation, the incoming data was processed and stored in databases, i.e. in the Financial Data Bank (PAB) and the Operational Financial Data Bank (OPAB), and then services were provided and analyses were performed for users.
Since the primary purpose of the PIR was to serve the functions of macro-level financial management (e.g., monitoring budget implementation), macro-level information was generated from taxpayer and institutional input data “channeled” into the information system (quick reports, cash flow reports, etc.). Since the amount of data flowing in as input from economic entities and budgetary institutions was enormous, this meant the continuous performance of a huge amount of mass data processing tasks within the system.

The purpose of the two data banks (PAB, OPAB) was to store data and information of an informative nature for financial management and to facilitate further analyses. The data banks, together with their associated algorithm set and statistical and mathematical analysis program packages, formed an efficient analysis and information production system.

In the center of the established national computer network, the modules of the so-called "Central Financial Subsystem" of the PIR operated on 5 high-performance Siemens computers. The PAB and OPAB data banks were also located here, and the Siemens machinery provided the network control functions. Application developments also took place here.
The county computer subnetworks were connected to the center with 25 TPA machines, on which the modules of the so-called "County Local Government Finance Subsystem" of the PIR operated. The county tasks were carried out by distributed processing between the Siemens machine park and the TPAs.
The terminal network connected to Siemens computers enabled interactive access to the PAB and OPAB data banks from the remote terminals of the Ministry of Finance and several other governing bodies (KSH, MNB, Ministry of Industry, Chamber of Commerce, etc.), as well as from the terminals of the county local government finance subsystem via the TPA network computers.
Since the late 1980s, the central computer park has served several hundred remote terminals, including the terminals of the administrators of the capital/county tax office customer services using the on-line query system of the central current account databases. . (The PSZTI provided system supervision and help desk for the query system.)
The number of personal computers used in PIR reached one thousand.

The functions of the "Central Finance Subsystem" included ensuring the interactive use of the PAB and OPAB data banks; ensuring the operation of the on-line current account query system for tax office customer service agents; serving financial management with financial-economic analyses and information generation. Its additional function was to perform mass data processing belonging to the modules (=information circles) of the subsystem, managing cash flow and current account management, managing taxpayer/institution master data repositories, etc., and providing mass services. The central machine park essentially operated - in addition to serving interactive users - as a large data processing and service provider with production management and a dispatch group. The quantitative expansion of the mass data processing and services performed by the Siemens machine park in the period 1970-1989 is well illustrated by the fact that the annual machine-hour capacity used (converted to the initial Siemens 4004/45 equivalent) increased from 9 thousand hours per year in 1971 to approximately 370 thousand hours per year in 1989.

The functions of the "County Local Government Finance Subsystem" included processing of household taxes and fees, salary settlement of employees of budgetary institutions and processing of accounting data. County-level financial management was provided with access to the data files of the PAB database on the central computer for a given county.

Az 1969-1988 között általa moduláris kiépítéssel fejlesztett és a fejlesztéssel párhuzamosan működtetett PIR egyes információ-technológiai megoldásait, ill. eszközeit a PMSZK/PSZTI - élve a technológia fejlődése által nyújtott lehetőségekkel - már ebben az időszakban is korszerűsítette vagy lecserélte. A PIR kiépítettségének addigi állapotában, olajozottan, jól működött, és teljesítette azokat az elvárásokat, amelyek érdekében létrehozták.
Az 1990-es évek elején, a rendszerváltozás idején nagy változások kezdődtek és követték egymást. (A PSZTI életében is: 1991 végén megszűnt önálló intézményi léte, az APEH része lett.) Ezután még néhány évig működtek a PIR egyes moduljai. Megtörtént az államháztartás reformja, többször átalakult az intézményi struktúra; az információ-technológia is egy más korszakba lépett.

• Gergely Csaba: Fejezetek a PMSZK történetéből, Budapest, PMSzK, 2009 
• A Pénzügyminisztérium Számítóközpont – tájékoztató (belső kiadvány, ~1970)
• A Pénzügyi Számítástechnikai Intézet – tájékoztató (belső kiadvány, ~1982)

Koncz Gabriella és Póti Imréné szíves közlései nyomán (2022. jan.)