IT and Authority: Federal executive bodies move to electronic interagency interaction

Transition of all federal executive bodies to electronic interagency interaction from October 1 2011 has become the highlight of the meeting which took place on September 26 with the Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin at its head. At the meeting the Minister of Communications and Mass Media of Russia - Igor Shchegolev – made a report about the basic principles of operation of interagency electronic interaction system and prospects of its introduction.

Vladimir Putin mentioned that transition to electronic interagency interaction – “is a very important stage in implementation of our system project to upgrade the effective and modern state governance mechanism”, which is first and foremost oriented “toward the needs of citizens, interests of the society and national economy”. Introduction of state-of-the-art electronic technologies, he thinks, will help to speed up and improve many administrative procedures, get rid of ineffective expenses. The Prime Minister stressed that a current concern was introduction of the system at the federal level, while from July 1 2012 all regions and municipalities were to move to electronic interagency interaction. Vladimir Putin turned the attention of attendees to the fact that procedures of electronic interaction with state agencies were to be clear and have certain dates of performance. He highlighted the importance of open discussion with the society of all the issues related to provision of government and municipal services, and the need to take into account all expressed constructive ideas, proposals, and criticism.

Igor Shchegolev reminded that each agency had its information system, and it was decided to build an interagency electronic interaction system which has now been integrated into all federal bodies. This made it possible to preserve capital investment, prevent data loss and within a rather short time establish interaction between agencies, he said.

The Minister of Communications and Mass Media of Russia said that regions would be connected to the system via “cloud technologies”.

The Minister highlighted that the current system was able to process up to two million enquiries per day. At the same time Igor Shchegolev assured that the system was highly reliable and with appearance of new services it would be able to process over a billion of enquiries. “We may claim that this is a unique project not only within Russia, but on the international scale as well”, - Minister believes. Igor Shchegolev considers that the interagency electronic interaction system has an export potential, as the system rests upon best existing global practices.