All Russian state services must be digitalized by 2015, President Dmitry Medvedev has said. He defined information technologies as one of the key directions for the country’s development.On Wednesday, the Russian leader held a joint meeting of the Russian State Council and the Presidential Council for the Development of Information Society. On the agenda there were the results of the implementation of electronic government. In addition, the authorities set up the priorities for the development of an information society in 2010-2011.
”I like this topic. I hope you do, too,” Medvedev said, according to the transcript on the Kremlin website.
The head of state reminded that the concept of electronic government development was introduced in May last year.
“You know that, according to the strategy of the development of information society in the Russian Federation, we ought to transfer all the state services into electronic form. I underline – all of them,” Medvedev said.
He said that currently the state provides more than 1,500 services, which, in fact, “looking from a different angle” means “thousands, tens of thousands services”. According to the president, people have to face long queues to make inquiries, or need to turn to several government bodies, and sometimes there is simply a lack of information.
The scheduled time for providing services is yet another sore point, the president said. For instance, getting permission for construction is “the talk of the town”, and takes years.
“It is obvious that introducing electronic services will solve many of these problems,” he said.
Recently, Russia launched a website – http://www.gosuslugi.ru/ – that is meant to solve the problem. It offers citizens the necessary information about the services they often need and what documents they should provide to receive them.
“Today, preparing for this address, I logged surfed that website,” Medvedev said. “It is quite systemic; it contains aggregative kinds of services, it is rather easy to use. But that is it.”
The website does provide information, but does not provide services, he said.
The president named four tasks that must be solved in the near future. First of all, establishing a common approach to providing electronic services, using compatible software, systems and databases.
Second, further development of a legal framework that would meet modern requirements.
The third task is providing better access to the Internet and improving the connection speed. While in Moscow 60% of the population use the web, "in the majority of other regions this figure is 30-35 percent."
The president stressed the need to give special attention to connecting the state health and cultural services to the Internet, "just as we have recently connected all schools to the Internet, we should work the same way."
The fourth problem to be addressed, the president said, is providing enough qualified specialists.
Summarizing the results of the meeting, Medvedev noted that in the regions where authorities are interested in implementing electronic state services, there are positive developments. In the regions where authorities see new requirements as “Christmas tree decorations,” saying that life is difficult enough, “there will be no movement there.”
“Those who do not address this issue demonstrate that they are not able to work in modern conditions,” he said.
