Izvestia: “E-government comes to provinces”
The government rules to allocate an extra 670 million roubles on online state services.
Vladimir Putin, on October 27, held a governmental session focusing on the results of introduction of online state services at the federal level. The system was launched on October 1, and on July 1, 2012, it will reach regions and municipalities. Minister of Communications and Mass Media Igor Shchegolev told Izvestia that after a full-scale transition to electronic document turnover, the state will offer about 700 services at the federal level and more than 17,000 services throughout Russia.
It's been almost a month that citizens have been able to use the more than 300 e-services offered by 56 federal bodies, from the Pension Fund to the highway patrol.
"Earlier citizens themselves had to collect certificates and extracts from official documents. They had, on average, to run around various offices four-to-six times, in fact, doing the job of state officials," Putin described the situation.
Now, based on the new system, state officials have come to exchange information using inter-department communication.
Now that the new system has been launched, citizens have most often used the services offered by the Federal Migration Service, Federal Taxation Service, Federal Registration Service and the Federal Treasury, requested extracts from the register of legal bodies, cadastral passports and receipts for payment of fines.
The government, though, has not gone online, as of yet. Most departments have not posted on their websites or on the billboards in the federal departments any lists of e-services and required documents. Vladimir Putin was indignant with this situation: he instructed the heads of 'guilty' state bodies to take the process under their personal control. And he tasked his staff to personally check various departments on this point.
"It is inadmissible for officials to demand documents and information that is present in the e-data base as they had used to do," Putin said.
Now regional and municipal authorities will have to do a similar work. The deadline is July 1, 2012. Putin hopes that the regions with experience of e-services will go over to such online services earlier than this date. Other constituent territories of the Russian Federation will have to install all the necessary hardware and software and start full-scale work in July.
Igor Shchegolev assured Izvestia that the e-government would have no failures in its work even when it would be launched in full capacity. For example, what had appeared to be failures on the state purchasing website, turned out to have arisen from an excessive number of queries.
"The website of state purchases had been designed much earlier, the system of state services is more modern," Shchegolev told Izvestia. "Now we have taken every effort to prevent failures."
In calling on provinces to do better work, the governmental session ruled to allocate extra 670 million roubles on co-funding information system development. The funds will be extended on a tender basis: the best proposals will get additional funds.
Alexander Matveyev
Anastasia Novikova
