László Várallyai

Statistical Analyses of Digital Divide Factors

Abstract The digital divide has become an extremely important issue for many international organizations and a major challenge for policy makers and academic researchers. We have to know the factors of digital divide to find solutions for eliminating disparities in ICTs.The first goal of our research is to measure or calculate the digital divide in Hungary. The digital divide is a complex and multidimensional issue, which requires taking into account diverse technologies, variables, and territories. In this context, factor analysis has revealed as a useful tool to capture the overall dimension of the digital divide. Therefore our research is based on different ICT indicators from Eurostat statistics and the Empirica survey results. Our research focuses on the digital divide circumstances in Hungary. The investigated fields are the followings: Percentage of households with access to the Internet; Percentage of households with a broadband connection; Percentage of individuals regularly using the Internet at least once a week; Percentage of individuals who have never used a computer; Percentage of individuals who ordered goods or services online for private use. The correlation matrix in our research (which comes from factor analysis) shows that all variables are closely related to each other, with correlation coefficients larger than 0.8. For instance, the percentage of individuals who have never used a computer is highly and negatively correlated with using the Internet and having access at home because most people are connected to the Internet through a computer. Furthermore, the high and positive correlations of broadband infrastructural and usage indicators show the increasing importance of high-speed connections: many of the latest online services, are only possible through fast networks. Given these strong correlations, factor analysis seems to be appropriate.Since the EU has been paying special attention to bridging the rural-urban digital divide the relationship between ICT factor and population density has also been analyzed. Furthermore, the percentage of population aged 65 and over is included to capture the potential influence of regional demographic differences on the extent of ICT adoption. In this sense, older people often face more barriers to use ICT than younger individuals. The highest correlations with ICT factor are found for GDP per capita, human resources in science and technology, in contrast to population density, which shows the lowest one among the considered variables. This article shows our research results on the field of digital divide factors using by statistical analyses.

Decreasing the Digital Divide by Increasing E-Innovation and E-Readiness Abilities in Agriculture and Rural Areas

Technologies and skills in the ICT sector have rapidly advanced in the past forty years, but the profession has not kept up with this process. Unfortunately, poorly qualified colleagues are even found in sector today. The EU ensures that the knowledge, skills and creativity of the European workforce (including ICT practitioners) meet the highest standards, by using effective lifelong learning. ICT programs offer workers the full advantage of strategic and operational opportunities. More and better qualified ICT practitioners and e-skilled managers are needed to take advantage of them. That is why e-skills are a central aspect of European policies, which increase the competitiveness and productivity of the workforce. Education providers, government and industries have to collaborate to accomplish these goals. Important factors of the digital divide are networking, internet penetration and services, as well as e-skills on all levels. This research and developments focus on the discovery of the differences in the e-readiness and developing of education programs in agri-informatics to reduce the digital gaps in agriculture and rural areas. In the first part of the article, the usage of network services were evaluated on two regional levels. On the national level, it analyzed the EU member states, in order to compare their actual development level. On a micro-regional level, the SMEs of a typical rural settlement were evaluated, since within the functional analysis, the evaluation of rural regions has grown in importance and, with regard to territory and population, Hungary is mainly classified as a rural area. 106 enterprises were involved in this study and the data collected during the research were derived by Principal Component and Cluster analyses. Farms consider network services to be unnecessary because of the nature of their work, even though most of the factors included in the analysis were considered important or expressly important by service and commercial enterprises, regardless of the applications they use. The second part of the article presents those educational tools which could increase the e-readiness of SMEs and principally aid agricultural enterprises.

ANALYSIS THE ADVANCED ICT USAGE OF THE HUNGARIAN SME SECTOR FOR PREPARING A DOMESTIC AGRI-FOOD RESEARCH

In the Hungarian agro-food sector SMEs have a key role but regarding the tendency of the performance of SME sector, comparing to EU-28 average, the performance of Hungarian SME sector has gradually worsened between 2008 and 2015 while the EU average has an increasing trend. ICT can help enterprises and this article is an overview of the ICT situation of Hungarian SMEs. It is important to analyse in detail the ICT usage characteristics of agro SMEs in the food supply chain because these ICT devices, tools and services are crucial to smooth the information flow within the chain. For all these reasons our work aims to find out how Hungarian agro-food SMEs use ICT and how ICT adoption affect their business procedures, performance and development. A striking observation to emerge from the data comparison is the difference among SMEs and large enterprises regarding the usage of the different basic and advanced ICT solutions. A much bigger percent of large companies use advanced ICT then SMEs and mainly small enterprises are lagging behind as the attitudes of medium sized enterprises are rather similar to the large ones. In Hungary small enterprises in agro-food industry are in difficult financial state and for them free Cloud Computing services can offer good opportunities as they do not have initial costs. ICT adoption is very important to them as ICT sector is a dynamically growing sector and if customers and partners of an enterprise adapt faster to these technological innovations, it may have a negative effect on the different processes, performance and financial results of the organisation. In this article our aim was to determine the main question groups for our questionnaire which focus mainly on ICT solutions supporting the quality of communication and relationship between partners. As the basic IT tools are available in the major part even in the SMEs besides large companies, the two main issues will be the usage of advanced online services and the usage of high quality ICT solutions.

Collaborative working environment and knowledge databank for agroforestry training and education

The aim of the AgroFE project (http://www.agrofe.eu) is to develop vocational training in the field of agroforestry in six countries. Several levels of training are targeted by the project, levels N3-N4 relate to farmers and future farmers, levels N5-N6 affect (future) advisors, trainers, teachers, and technicians who are working in the domain. In the context of ICT related to the AgroFE project there are four components: the collaborative tools, the knowledge databank, the tools for training and a portal that integrates the tools. The Agrof-MM Erasmus+ project reinforces the AgroFE project that ended in December 2015. The objective of the Agrof-MM project is to train European agricultural stakeholders in agroforestry practices. The project will give them the opportunity to familiarise themselves with agroforestry, and to improve their knowledge of it, in order to work towards the development of agroforestry in the Mediterranean and mountain regions of Europe.

Socio-economic Factors of Soil Pollution☆

Abstract Analysing the relationship between agricultural production and the natural environment (soil, water and air) and the unfavourable reactions between them became an important question in the second half of the 20th century and nowadays both in Hungary and across Europe. Impairment of the environment is a complex process, it affects all the three basic components of the biosphere (soil, water, air) always at the same time, but the level of the effect is different for each part. Soils are threatened by two basic dangers: the various soil degradation processes (water and wind erosion, acidification, salinisation, physical and biological degradation, unfavourable changes in the humus content and a decrease in the buffer capacity) as well as pollution. In spite of all these, quality, functionality and productivity of soils can be preserved and maintained. Our aim is developing a statistical based information system from the data of the Hungarian Soil Information Monitoring System measured points. We developed a method for estimating element content. To determine the concentration of the elements, we need only the GPS co-ordinates of the place based on the number of nearest neighbouring points. This method does not calculate with spatial circumstances. The other possibility is using the kriging method (spatial interpolation) for estimating more precisely the element content. In this study these two methods are compared. Building our statistical based information system has to determine the number of nearest neighbouring points to be considered in the case of certain elements. We discovered that elements can be ranged only into two groups depending on how many nearest neighbouring diagnostic points were considered to kriging. • 3 neighbouring diagnostical points: K, P, Sr • 10 neighbouring diagnostical points: Al, B, Ba, Ca, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Na, Ni, Pb, S, Ti, V, Y, Zn Using this method the soil pollution locations and elements and its concentration can be determined. The other important question is to investigate the socio-economic factors of these soil pollutions. There are a lot of data in the Eurostat database which can show the socio-economic effect of these pollutions. Based on these data is concluded that usage amount of chemical fertilizer, total population and total grain yield are the three most important socio-economic factors that contribute to soil heavy metal pollution. Enterprise amount, total cultivated area, gross value of farming, forestry, animal husbandry product as well as total freight amount have less impact on soil heavy metals pollution. Last and least impact factors are GDP and value of industry output in rural area. This article shows our research results on the field of socio-economic factors of soil pollution used by statistical analyses, based on the Eurostat database in Hungary and across Europe.

Readiness for Future Internet Services in Rural Areas

Abstract Among the functional analysis the evaluation of rural regions has a growing importance. From the analysis reveals, that there is a significant difference between rural and metropolitan areas. With regard to the territory and the population, Hungary is mainly ranked as rural area, so in accordance with our objectives, the attitudes of the business sector have been studied globally on a rural settlement and we present our results in this article. We have chosen Hajduboszormenyfor detailed analysis and106 enterprises involved in our study. The data collected during the research were construed by Principal Component and Cluster analyses and the results were evaluated from two aspects. On the one hand for the SME-s, and on the other hand for agricultural enterprises. The separation was necessary because the situation of the SME-s had a bad reputation, especially in rural regions. The basis of the results of the analysis, agro-enterprises use ICT at least of all. The farms do not use and consider unnecessary the use of broadband services, referring to the nature of their work. They communicate with partners and clients personally and trust is very important factor for them. They sell the products and carry out the purchase just few places. A change in this situation is not expected in the foreseeable future. In contrast, the most of factors were considered important or expressly important by service and commercial enterprises, regardless from the application. Regarding to remote network services there was a uniform conclusion. The majority of SME-s is not familiar with these services, and when the services are known, these are not considered useful or efficient. The price is not a determinative factor for the use of these services, so the diffusion of the solution would be difficult and lengthy.E-business can do much to strengthen the vitality and sustainability of agricultural and related industries.Enterprises still do not interested in new IT solutions, such as Cloud Computing. They not trust about it and only 10% considering to take a remote software or data server. We have concluded that the current result of network investments is principally the creation of the possibility and right of accessibility, and equal opportunities. The business SME sectors do not take enough advantage of business opportunities provided by networks.

Compare different methods for extensibility of measurement results of point samples of the soil protection information and monitoring system

The Hungarian Soil Information Monitoring System (SIM) covers the whole country and provides opportunity to create similar information systems for the natural resources (atmosphere, supply of water, flora biological resources etc). The aim of the SIM is to relate these databases.

Advantages of Open Source Based e-learning Tools in the Collaboration and Training in the Agricultural Education

One of the primary benefits of open source software is that it reduces the costs to produce systems and services. Traditional proprietary software vendors are realizing this fact, and are beginning to build their closed software products quietly using lots of open source software. In the long-run, competition will force these cost savings to be passed to the consumer. In this paper the most important free and commercial e-Learning systems and their functional features, modules, standards, hardware and software requirements by Vendor’s Web sites and different e-Learning service portals are shortly summarized and compared. We selected the Moodle system within an European projects, which is a software package for producing Internet-based courses and web sites. It is an ongoing development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education. The aim of our European project was to promote the use of multimedia knowledge in adult training / lifelong learning in order to facilitate competitiveness, employability and mobility of adults who are victims of the digital divide or of some of its components such as distance, initial level of knowledge, language, use of complex technologies. One of the results of the NODES project is that we introduced the Moodle system into the graduate, postgraduate PhD, adult trainings programmes and it is a very successful system as an educational portal system for our faculty. We are using some extended tools in Moodle such as the Word templates for easy making Moodle questionnaires, Covcell Audio/Video Conferencing Tool, Inwicast Mediacenter, Audio recorder, AutoView Presenter which allows you to put video on-line with synchronised slides.

Multidisciplinary Aspects of Learning Information Technology in Accredited Agricultural Education Programs

During the transformation of the Hungarian Higher Education System new educational programs were developed on different levels in the agricultural higher education. The levels of the programs are Postsecondary, BSc, MSc and PhD programs. Most curricula required learning information technology on different content and level. These educational programs are accredited and the curricula are very similar in every university. The contents of the computing subject are almost the same on the BSc level. There are 15 BSc, 15 MSc programs in the Hungarian Higher Education System in 2009. The content of the informatics subject are the most important subtopics such as spread sheet and database handling, networking, etc. The professional subjects contain some informatics knowledge, but it depends on the educational program, subjects and professors. In the MSc programs the informatics topics differ by name and content according to the target of the training program. On this level more professional subjects can be found which contain applied informatics knowledge. But we think this is not enough in our education systems so we accredited the agricultural engineer in agricultural informatics and government BSc program. This program started 3 years ago and 5 Hungarian Universities offer this training program in 2009. The subject group of basic informatics has 36 credits and applied agricultural informatics subjects need 29 credits. It means that the rate of informatics and specialized informatics knowledge is more than 30% in the curriculum. The newest effort is that we have developed the Master of Business Informatics program with a “Informatics for Rural Development” specialization. The next development is a one year vocational training program in agricultural informatics. In the paper we discuss the demand of informatics knowledge on different educational levels and in programs based on the accredited training and outcome requirements as well as our training experiences.