E - water without e -piva - money is the wind: Russia has a jump over the electronic abyss

In the capital of Chuvashia, the All -Russian meeting "Electronic Government for Electronic Russia" was held. The First Deputy Minister of Communications of the Russian Federation Andrei Korotkov told the meeting participants about how in India an illiterate peasant comes to an open computer for everyone and asks a question: "Tell me, about a computer where I can sell my rice in the village or in the village B?" “In the village with, the most respectable,” the computer replies to him. The speaker illustrated the thought expressed earlier by this example: the poor countries prefer to live in hunger, but to develop information technologies in order not to remain on the sidelines forever.

Russia, apparently, decided to adopt the experience of "poor countries." At the beginning of the year, the target federal program "Electronic Russia: 2002 - 2010" was adopted. The Chuvash Republic advanced more than others in the direction of its implementation, where a year and a half ago they began to create a republican information and analytical system (RIAS). Project

RIAS, as the head of the information technology department of the President of the Chuvash Republic, Dmitry Nazipov, explained, is an integral part of the program for reforming the public finances management program. The latter has been implemented since the beginning of last year in five regions of Russia - winners of the federal competition under the auspices of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation (Chuvashia took first place). Money was allocated by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The purpose of the program is the financial recovery of the republic. The price of the RIAS project is $ 2.5 million. So far, it has been funded by about a third.

On the basis of RIAS in Chuvashia, the so -called "electronic government" is created - a fundamentally new model of the interaction of the state, citizens and business for Russia. According to the head of the republic, Nikolai Fedorov, "for us, Rias became an instrument of transformation of the state apparatus, the need for which the Russian president so persistently speaks." Fedorov spoke about one of his working trips when the head of the agricultural enterprise noted that thanks to RIAS his relations with the superiors acquired a completely different character: "I now know what the latest decisions were adopted by the government and the president, what funds were transferred to our area for fuel and gasification, I do not need to contact officials with these issues." Already today in Chuvashia they are ready for new large -scale experiments. For example, to modernize and optimize managerial procedures - or, as it is now customary to call them, business processes. As well as to conduct an inventory and revision of the list of services that public bodies provide citizens, to the organization of electronic procurement of products for republican needs.

Within the framework of the RIAS, all 20 district communications units are computerized in Chuvashia, through the allocated channels they are connected to the center in Cheboksary. Administrations of the districts, tax inspectorates, departments of the Pension Fund and other state bodies are already connected to the access units to the Internet. And by the end of the year, in district centers and cities, public access points for the population, equipped with 5 to 7 computers each, will be opened. About 500 schools (primarily rural ones), libraries, hospitals will be connected to the network. In the buildings of republican power structures, it is planned to establish the so -called "information kiosks" for visitors. More than 80 percent of the turnover of documents in Chuvashia is already carried out in electronic form. Ordinary citizens (at least those who have access to the Internet) look at the official Internet portal of the administration of the President of Chuvashia, as to their home. In the portal - tens of thousands of pages: from the news feed in real time and regulatory documents to the electronic version of the Chuvash Encyclopedia and works of Chuvash literature.

However, what was done in the electronic life of the republic can be told for a very long time. About intentions - even longer. Doubts in another. So serious that they could not get rid of them even with the help

"E-watering" and "e-piva", released specifically to the meeting. The "electronic" drinks poured at a banquet in a violent stream, but did not add clarity. From the speeches of the participants in the meeting, it follows that, in the rough language of the party-Soviet press, the best practices of Chuvashia should become the property of everyone. In this regard, there is a simple one, like a shovel, the question: how real such electronic expansion is?

According to the Minister of Economic Development Herman Gref, we are late for several years. If Russia began the large-scale implementation of E-technologies five years earlier, "we would have gone to today at the level of 20 percent of Internetization." According to the minister, so far we have reached a level of 3-5 percent, while the United States - 65 percent and plan to achieve a number of citizens to the Internet over the next five years. Thus, not only unique opportunities for human communication and access to information will appear, but a completely new level of public control over the authorities will also open. Including - behind its individual representatives. Herman Gref showed his readiness to place his work schedule and information on the topics of his working meetings on the network.

I sincerely rejoiced at the desire of the Minister of Economic Development to become "more open and transparent", however, I can’t get rid of the skepticism about the fact that the rest of the government will joyfully follow his example. All of them - in words - for transparency. In reality, everything is exactly the opposite. In particular, the press service of the Ministry of Taxes and Duties likes to send journalists to the site of his ministry. The trouble is that this site contains only the most general information. For a specific question, say, how much the oil industry owed the budget, the fiscals answer: Tax secret. As long as the departments have the right to supply their documents with a heading "for official use", we will not build any information company. The rector of the Higher School of Economics Yaroslav Kuzminov drew the attention of Herman Gref to this circumstance. The minister, in response, promised to speak with the relevant legislative initiative to solve this problem.

In the meantime, in many rural schools of the country there are not only computers, but even just textbooks. At the school of the village of Vysokoye Tver Region, in the last academic year, the graduation class got a single set of textbooks for 30 people. At the same time, Herman Gref believes that by 2010 there will be at least 50 million Internet users in the Russian Federation, and this is "... the key to our competitiveness in the world market." It seems that in Russia, after a long interpretation, a new generation of "Kremlin dreamers" is born.