01 August 2011, 10:16 Vladimir Milov

Multi-window power

Vladimir Milov Leader of the Democratic Choice movement, head of the Energy Policy Institute

The leaders of our country love to talk about modernization, innovation and the fight against corruption. Here is a plot that concerns one, two, and three at once. We are talking about the “electronic government” program (EG), the launch date of which was pompously announced on July 1 of this year (almost 10 years after the start of work on it).

We were promised that various government bodies would not require data and documents from citizens that would at least once be entered into a single federal information database, and we would be able to receive all types of government services via the Internet, mobile phone or through touch screen information terminals installed in the lobby of any government agency.

In essence, there was supposed to be a revolution in the sphere of public services, a sharp reduction in the volume of interaction between citizens and officials, a reduction in queues, and bribes.

But the miracle did not happen. On June 17, the State Duma quietly adopted amendments to the law of July 27, 2010 No. 210-FZ “On the organization of the provision of state and municipal services”, postponing the implementation of the electronic signature for at least a year - until July 1, 2012. No noisy advertising campaign about the failure Naturally, there was no implementation of the project, messages on Channel One television and the like - it is not customary for us to advertise the failures of the authorities.

Meanwhile, there was a huge failure. By the appointed date, a ridiculously small number of information terminals had been installed throughout the country - according to the latest report, only 500 units. The general contractor for the ES program, Rostelecom, has currently installed only one access point to ES services per region, and the constituent entities of the Russian Federation must finance everything else themselves - but there is no money for this in the regional budgets.

Regulations for interdepartmental interaction under the ES program have not yet been created - worse, the departments are completely unprepared for the implementation of the technology of a unified database of citizens. The June amendments to 210-FZ introduce a list of 18 types of documents that citizens will still have to provide in person. Thus,

the most important previously declared principle of “electronic government”, the principle of “one window”, is actually being cancelled. This completely devalues the very idea of “electronic government”.

Thus, not just one of the loudest ideas of the authorities of the last decade is quietly dying, but an idea designed to demonstrate that the authorities are seriously, and not in words, engaged in innovation, primarily in the economy under its jurisdiction.

The shameful fate of “electronic government,” the history of which stretches back to 2002, is one of the striking systemic failures of the model of governing the country that has been imposed on us in recent years. The failure of the electronic document has specific authors, with first and last names. First of all, Minister of Communications and Mass Communications Igor Shchegolev . He himself did not have the slightest experience in the field of information technology before heading the ministry, but he actively pushed people from a certain company Marshall Capital Partners - Alexander Provotorov (president of Rostelecom), Konstantin Malofeev (before end of June – member of the company’s board of directors).

In March of this year, Valery Zubakha, who was appointed to this position in October 2009, was fired from the post of director of the Electronic Government project at Rostelecom, immediately after Putin approved Rostelecom as the sole executor of the electronic government project without competition. At the time of his appointment, Mr. Zubakha did not have serious experience in managing IT projects - his biography included service in the Armed Forces, work in the forensic center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Finance , and the Federal Treasury . Zubakha left as quietly as the amendments to 210-FZ were adopted: no investigation into the results of his one and a half year activities as a project manager, or at all any public information about these results.

Another powerful curator of Electronic Russia is the 37-year-old head of the White House Department of Information Technology and Communications Alexei Popov , who was responsible for informatization of the Federal Treasury in 2004–2011. The latter turned into scandals: last year, it was not possible to complete the creation of an all-Russian IT budgeting system, during the five years of design of which the Treasury distributed a huge budget of 15 billion rubles. By the beginning of 2010, the system was supposed to function in all 83 regions of the country, but only started working in 6. It was planned to deploy 367 thousand automated workstations in treasury structures, but no more than 27 thousand were actually deployed . The launch of the system was postponed to January 1, 2012.

The history of Popov’s work in the treasury can be called scandalous not only in terms of failure to meet deadlines for the implementation of important information systems. For example, with his arrival, the then small company Organizational and Technological Solutions (OTR-2000 LLC and OTR LLC) , which became the largest treasury contractor, became a regular recipient of generous contracts. The contracts with her included fantastic things like a lot worth almost a billion rubles just for annual technical support of software for electronic document management systems. But, despite such strange generosity towards a company that was far removed from the market leaders, no one began to investigate the potential connections between Mr. Popov and OTR LLC.

However, despite such results of work, on February 28, 2011, Alexey Popov was triumphantly promoted, becoming director of the department of information technology and communications of the government, and by Putin’s order dated April 5, 2011 No. 569-r, he was appointed head of the subcommittee on the use of information technology in the provision of state and municipal services to the government commission for the implementation of IT in the activities of government bodies (the commission actually responsible for the implementation of plans for the implementation of “electronic government”).

It cannot be said that with such “godfathers” the disastrous results of the implementation of “electronic government” are somehow surprising.

We are seeing a clear example of how the country’s governance system itself, built over the last 10 years, is failing.

When leadership positions are occupied by completely incomprehensible people without sufficient experience in the relevant field (or experience, to put it mildly, not the most successful, like the White House official Popov), appointed for personal patronage, and not due to professional suitability. When multi-billion dollar contracts for critical work in an absolutely competitive field, which is IT, are awarded without competition. When the guilty officials do not bear any responsibility for failures in their work and even receive promotions, they are “their own”, and in the current coordinate system everything is possible for one’s own.

Here you have in one bottle - both the inability to implement the most basic innovative technologies and clear grounds for suspicion of corruption. In that very case, when the state, loudly talking about modernization and innovation, planned to start the innovation process with itself.

The failure of the “electronic government” program is an indicator of the ineffectiveness of the country’s governance system - Gazeta.Ru