Translated material
A subsidiary of Rostec has created a messenger for officials
The RT-inform company, part of the Rostec corporation, has developed a corporate messenger for companies and government agencies. Interfax reports this with reference to the company's press service.
The application has functions for messaging, group chats, conferences, audio and video calls, file sharing and others. According to the developers, it works on Windows, Linux, MacOS, iOS and Android operating systems.
The application is at the testing stage. In the future, the messenger will be tested at Rostec. “RT-inform proposed a pilot project, which, of course, will require testing and refinement,” corporation representative Ekaterina Baranova told RBC.
The working title of the application is “Secure Instant Messaging Platform.” It is expected that the messenger will be presented on June 9 at the “Digital Industry of Industrial Russia” conference in Innopolis (a city in Tatarstan founded in 2012), RBC writes.
“Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the need to create a domestic messenger that could guarantee reliable communications to Russian companies and government agencies. For the sake of secure exchange and storage of data, government agencies must switch to using Russian software, which was created specifically for these purposes,” RT-Inform CEO Kamil Gazizov told Interfax through the press service.
- In May, it became known that the Ministry of Economic Development proposes to legislatively prohibit officials and military personnel from conducting work correspondence through mobile applications of foreign developers, including mailboxes on Gmail.com and instant messengers WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram. The head of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, Nikolai Nikiforov, in turn, said that the use of foreign instant messengers by officials is a violation of internal regulations and can lead to criminal cases.
- In April it was reported that Mail.Ru Group could develop a messenger for officials. Adviser to the President of the Russian Federation on Internet development issues, German Klimenko, argued that this is the only company that has the relevant developments, RBC reports .
- The possibility of introducing restrictions for civil servants on the use of public email services and instant messengers has been discussed in the Russian Federation for several years. Particular attention to this issue was drawn to several leaks of correspondence that government officials conducted on WhatsApp and Viber, as well as in public email. At least two such bills were submitted to the State Duma, but both of them were rejected.
- Kommersant wrote in May 2016, citing research data, that almost 80 percent of Russian government organizations use public mail services for official correspondence.