Opening Remarks at a Meeting of the Presidential Council for the Development of the Information Society in Russia.Part 2
February 12, 2009
The Kremlin, Moscow
Вступительное слово на заседании Совета по развитию информационного общества в России.
12 февраля 2009 года
Москва, Кремль
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 ones 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 didnt happen. This was to be the site where citizens could obtain full information on all the services provided by federal, regional and municipal authorities.
Nevertheless, on 9 February, I signed a law on access to information concerning the activities of state bodies and local governments. We need to make sure that it goes into force as soon as possible.
The strategy for the development of information society was adopted in February last year. A year has gone by, and unfortunately its plan has not yet been fully developed. We are here to discuss how to move forward on this issue and to do something about it.
I know that there is a proposal to establish a number of interdepartamental groups, groups that will be responsible for specific areas of work. I think this is reasonable or at least sensible idea let's discuss it.
I would like us to think about other fundamental points. In the global information society of course success goes to those who are able to produce added value cost effectively, taking into account the long-term growth trend in information resources and the different roles technologies and services can play.
Today the lion's share of all the services that we consume is imported. And yet some of the programming products weve developed, only in some areas but in some of very important ones, are among the leaders in the developed countries, and year after year our students win the most prestigious programming competitions. Let us discuss what should be done in this area, what sort of support is needed and the forms it should take.
There is another series of problems that I want to mention and perhaps my colleagues can elaborate on this in their presentations. The issue of infrastructural constraints, including the so-called conversion of radio frequency spectrum, has been on the agenda since 2006. Here all the heads of the relevant departments need to work out a schema to harmonise work between departments: this can be carried out at the departmental level or by holding meetings of the Cabinet.
Another issue is information technology in the social sphere. We need to start a massive training programme in new technologies for school teachers. We actually tried to do this as part of the national project. We may have achieved something but as yet we are only in the initial stages. We also need to think about moving forward to the use of free domestic software. I have done something about this and there have been some results: we have already prepared programmes that have enabled us to create what is in fact a first rate product, based on free software, but linked to the Russian reality.
We need to establish distance training centres for disabled children who study at home, and of course to ensure that all these children have computers connected to the Internet. This is also a very important task.
In healthcare we have said repeatedly that it is necessary to move towards putting patients medical histories into electronic form and some attempts to do this have been made. We also need to bring together social charts and other forms of record-keeping. Of course we need to digitalise the major archives, library and museum collections. I am also very involved in this and I hope that this work will be pursued right to the end, in order to forestall the losses occurring in our archives and our museum collections and just to put them in proper order. There should also be a system for recording the results of research, design and development activities funded by the budget.
Another important issue that we all face when we visit different parts of Russia is the digital divide. I remember back in 2000 at the G8 which was in Japan that year, this issue was raised with regard to bridging the digital divide in the world. But we have our own digital divide. We have a very big country and very different capacities.
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