It’s nice to see such an honest assessment of Russia’s IT and information infrastructure from Dmitry Medvedev. I think it’s well worth repeating here:
“As for electronic government, today virtually all federal structures are provided with modern computers connected to the Internet. Almost all state agencies have set up a database, but that is all that they have done. Our internal documents are all still circulated on paper, as they always have been. And computers are mainly used well, you know what they are used for. They are used as typewriters, only more convenient ones because you don’t need to retype things over and over.
In most cases for ordinary citizens nothing has changed. With rare exceptions, it is simply not possible to send in an application from a personal computer, or to trace the movement of one’s document in an office, or to get online help by means of the “single window” system. We were supposed to create a single portal for state and municipal services; it should have been up and running on 1 January of this year. It didn’t happen.”
Medvedev has set up a new committee to address the problem – the grandly titled Presidential Council for the Development of the Information Society in Russia. I certainly hope it gets somewhere – for one thing, I can’t think of a surer way to stifle corruption than to increase the number of rules-based computer interactions between citizens and government.
But it’s one thing to recognise a problem – quite another to actually solve it. Is the Russian government really capable of introducing a modern information infrastructure?
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“Is the Russian government really capable of introducing a modern information infrastructure?”
It’s not! Electronic document management systems are usually tools of optimization of existing well-defined business/governance processes. Governance in Russia is corruption-driven, therefore unsystematic. To give it an EDMS would be an equivalent of buying a Ferrari for someone who doesn’t know how to drive.
Misha Tavkhelidze´s last blog post..Sobering Russia Up
As for electronic government, today virtually all federal structures are provided with modern computers connected to the Internet.
And don’t the staff know it!
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@Misha: Electronic document management systems are usually tools of optimization of existing well-defined business/governance processes. Governance in Russia is corruption-driven, therefore unsystematic.
Wouldn’t the development of an electronic system take out the government employee (the corruptable human middleman) and reduce the potential for bribery?
I don’t really know enough about e-governance though – am I just being hopelessly naive? Would it actually just lead to corruption on a larger more systemic scale?
Really. Russia need to achieve 70% internet using among its population before.
Andy, are you talking about a middleman? You must be kidding, are you? You mean Putinodvedev, do you?
Misha Tavkhelidze´s last blog post..Sobering Russia Up
Za Rodinu!
Za Stalina!
I wouldn’t be so sceptical. There are great IT people here and as it becomes clear the e-government can save money, it will be increasingly implemented. Just as a small example (he said, scrounging for evidence for his possibly misguided optimism), today I entered my electricity meter reading into the copenergo site, which must have saved at least a few pieces of paper and man-minutes. And then think about being able to pay your rates and gas and so on at the payment machines.
What would be interesting would be for someone to list all of the things that *can* be processed on-line so we can see what, if any, progress is being made.
A true indicator will be when it is possible to pay traffic fines via a web-site.
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