The Vedomosti newspaper informs: Rosstandart has approved the terminological standards to be followed by the participants of the big data market, follows from the order of the department, which Vedomosti got acquainted with. This standard is being introduced for the first time, it follows from its description

The state standard (GOST) “Information Technologies. Big data. Review and vocabulary” is identical to the international standard Information technology – Big data – Overview and vocabulary, emphasize its developers from the National Center for Digital Economy of Moscow State University and the Institute of the Information Society. The development of the standard was carried out within the framework of the budgetary program of state support for the National Technological Initiative (NTI) competence center for big data storage and analytics at Moscow State University, said a representative of the autonomous non-commercial organization “NTI Platform”.

“The terms established by this standard are mandatory for use in all types of documentation and literature on this scientific and technical branch, included in the scope of work on standardization and (or) using the results of these works,” – noted in the description of the standard.

The GOST contains translations of English terms related to big data into Russian and a decoding of their meanings. For example, “data analytics” is “a composite concept that encompasses the acquisition, collection, validation and processing of data, including its quantification, visualization and interpretation.” And, for example, “data variability” – “changes in the transmission rate, format or structure, semantics or quality of the data array.” Then follow the key characteristics of big data (volume, processing speed, variety and variability) with an explanation of their meaning.

“The adoption of the first national standard sets the vector of joint actions by government, business, and academia to develop the data economy in Russia,” says Yuri Hohlov, chairman of the board of directors of the Institute of the Information Society. “We are committed to closing the big data standardization gap.” Terminology standards are the first in the IT industry, and then all the others are added to them, he explains.

According to Hohlov, eight more national standards in the field of big data are to be adopted, concerning their reference architecture, security, analysis methods, use cases, etc.

As of the end of 2019, the Boston Consulting Group estimated the volume of the Russian big data market at RUB 45 billion with a growth rate of 12% over the past five years. According to the calculations of the Big Data Association, the volume of the big data market in Russia is 10-30 billion rubles. At the same time, according to the average forecasts of Russian and foreign experts, this indicator is expected to grow to 300 billion rubles by 2024.

A terminological standard is really necessary, says Nikita Utkin, chairman of the Cyber-Physical Systems Technical Committee at Rosstandart: “It should allow big data market participants to communicate in one language – terminological uniformity is needed, for example, for drawing up procurement documents, technical specifications and technical documentation.”

“It will be possible to rely on this terminological apparatus when creating regulatory documents,” says Christina Proskurnina, head of Big Data at CROC.

The representative of Mail.ru Group believes that standardization of terms is a useful thing, as it reduces misunderstandings between market participants: “If the proposed terminology helps in structuring communication on a given topic, it’s not bad. Especially for those companies that are just getting started with big data.”

There are already several international standards for big data in the world that define concepts and terms, says director of the Institute for Internet Research Karen Ghazaryan: “Therefore, Rosstandart’s actions are quite logical. But for business, this standard does not change anything, it is, in fact, just a dictionary of terms with which participants in the big data market are already perfectly familiar.”

Rather, it is a dictionary for officials, who often have a vague idea of what big data is – it will only help companies with government purchases, summed up Ghazaryan.

“I would like the business to be more deeply involved in the development of big data standards,” Utkin concludes.

Source: Vedomosti newspaper, 15 Ju;y 2021

The full version of the 3rd issue for 2021, in which 9 articles were published, can be viewed on the journal’s website.

The articles were divided into the following thematic headings: “Digital Economy”, “Human in the information society”, “Information society and state power”, “Information society and law”, “Information society technologies”.

Our Russian authors from Moscow, Ekaterinburg and Dubna, as well as authors from the Republic of Belarus, Kazakhstan and the United States, investigate the problems of the risks of using cryptocurrencies, the peculiarities of identification in the context of Internet communication, the use of artificial intelligence in public administration, the use of digital technologies to enhance the effectiveness of studying foreign language, features of educational migration in the context of digitalization, problems of assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of experimental regulation in the field of digital innovations, theoretical aspects of administrative responsibility for violations of the right to information, the role of information as an object of civil rights, as well as various types of computing in fuzzy sensory systems.

Among the eighteen authors of this issue there are six doctors of sciences, nine candidates of sciences, two graduate students and one applicant. Four authors have the academic title of professor and five – associate professor. Thus, the author’s composition of this issue is one of the most titled in recent years.

On June 23, 2021, within the framework of the CIPR-2021 (Digital Industry of Industrial Russia conference) in Nizhny Novgorod, a panel discussion was held on the issues of standardization of artificial intelligence (AI) at the national and international levels. The event was addressed by Yuri Hohlov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Institute of the Information Society, head of the Data Subcommittee (PC 02) of the Artificial Intelligence Technical Committee for Standardization (TC 164), head of the Big Data Monitoring and Standardization Project of the NTI Competence Center at Moscow State University.

In his opening remarks, Alexei Uchenov, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, said that AI is increasingly being used in automation in the areas of transport, security, education, healthcare, urban property management and many other sectors of the economy.

“Taking into account the great social significance of these tasks, special requirements for the safety of use are imposed on the intelligent technologies – both for the life and health of people, and for the environment. The only way to objectively make sure that the system in real operating conditions will work exactly as planned by its developers, and will not pose any threats, is testing the artificial intelligence system, carried out according to unified standards, approaches and requirements”, – the speaker noted.

According to him, in addition to security guarantees, normative and technical regulation establishes metrological requirements, without which it is impossible to ensure the uniformity of measurements of the functional characteristics of AI systems. This unity allows us to compare two systems designed to solve the same problem, but developed by different companies, to compare the characteristics of the system with the capabilities of the operator solving the problem manually, as well as to predict the economic effect of the use of AI systems. In addition, regulatory and technical regulation helps to solve the problem of compatibility of various hardware systems with each other.

Ensuring the confidentiality of processed data is another goal of AI standardization. “The creation of artificial intelligence systems is impossible without specially prepared big data sets, which often contain confidential information and personal data. The lack of standards that impose unified requirements for procedures, for example, anonymization, declassification of this data, hinders the development of artificial intelligence systems,” said Sergei Garbuk, head of the technical committee for standardization” Artificial Intelligence”.

TC 164 is a specialized Russian organization in the field of AI standardization, operating at the international and national levels. The committee was created on the basis of RVC with the support of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation and Rosstandart in 2019 as a national mirror image of the specialized international subcommittee ISO / IEC JTC 1 SC 42 “Artificial Intelligence”. Today TC 164 includes more than 130 member organizations.

According to Sergei Garbuk, work on the standardization of AI is carried out, among other things, within the framework of the corresponding subproject of the federal project “Artificial Intelligence”, elaborated in September 2020. In December 2020, in agreement with the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia, a promising standardization program in the priority area “Artificial Intelligence” for the period up to 2024 was approved. By this time, it is planned to approve and update at least 111 standards in the field of AI.

During the session, Sergey Garbuk presented the structure of the AI standards set, developed in TC 164. It includes two large blocks: 1) standards in the field of AI systems and 2) standards in the field of data. In turn, the first block of standards branches into general-purpose standards and standards that define test requirements for specific AI applications.

The development of the second block of standards – standards in the field of data – is carried out by the Subcommittee “Data” in TC 164. The subcommittee is headed by Yuri Hohlov and supported within the framework of the program of the NTI Competence Center at Moscow State University. The staff of the Center participate in the activities of international working groups on data standardization and in coordinating the development of relevant national standards. Today, five draft national standards in the field of data are at different stages of development and approval.

The speaker cited the results of foreign studies, according to which the massive use of standardization (primarily in the field of industry) is economically feasible: by ensuring interoperability and interaction of industrial systems, companies can significantly increase labor productivity and thereby contribute to the country’s GRP. Similar econometric calculations of the impact of standardization on economic growth (from 0.2% to 0.9% of GRP) were carried out in several countries of the European Union, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia. Unfortunately, similar studies have not yet been done in Russia, but they would be a weighty argument in favor of standardization.

Yuri Hohlov paid special attention to the participation of Russian experts in the international data standardization. “International standardization (in general) and in the field of artificial intelligence and working with data (in particular) is, in fact, the consolidation at the international level of the open knowledge that communities share,” Yuri Hohlov noted.

By the time Russia began to work on data standardization, a corresponding terminological standard and a series of standards for the reference architecture of big data had already been formed at the international level. “It is extremely important for us to reduce the lag behind the international level, so that after leveling the situation, we could go further and fully participate in the work on standardization, including promoting our national interests,” the speaker shared.

It is planned that in the international work on the standardization of requirements for the quality of data sets, which began in the spring of 2021, Russian experts will already take a direct part on an equal basis with experts from other countries. “These are mainly representatives of the United States and Southeast Asian countries. In order to keep up with them, Russia needs to participate in this work in the same way, so that the knowledge that we accumulate and want to transfer to our developers, users and creators of systems for working with big data is the most advanced,” concluded Yuri Hohlov.

Sergey Izrailit, vice president for development and planning of the Skolkovo Foundation, spoke about the use of machine-readable technologies in the development and use of regulatory and technical documentation. “At the beginning of this year, we developed and launched a concept for the development of machine-readable law, which seeks to unify normative and technical and regulatory terminology, and most importantly, to the next step in this unification, to ensure its machine-readability,” the speaker said.

According to him, a step-by-step development of tools and methods for working with machine-readable standards is necessary. One of the approaches is to transfer the interaction of experts in the preparation of standards to sites that support the formation of both traditional, human-readable and machine-readable representations of the text. The first steps in this direction have been made by the Skolkovo Foundation within the framework of the standartopedia.ru project.

Kirill Krinkin, head of the Department of mathematical support and computer application, Saint Petersburg State Electrotechnical University “LETI”, spoke in more detail about how TC 164 is being integrated into the chain of creating international standards. The development of one international standard is coordinated by one person in charge from TC 164. The tasks of this person include: monitoring international initiatives, identifying risks and benefits at the early stages of developing an international standard, harmonizing it with national standards, making proposals for a standard, promoting national interests at the draft stage, forming suggestions and comments.

Alexey Ivanov, Deputy General Director of the Federal state unitary enterprise “STANDARTINFORM” (the transformation into the Federal state budgetary institution “Russian Institute for Standardization” will be completed soon), spoke about the development of AI standardization in the context of the development of the national standardization system as a whole. The main document in this area is the roadmap for the development of standardization in the Russian Federation for the period up to 2027, which defines 10 areas of standardization, 48 subprojects with specific deadlines and responsible persons, as well as 10 indicators that allow assessing the implementation of subprojects. An institute of curators has been created in Russia to help technical committees resolve issues of methodological, organizational, information support, as well as issues of planning and developing standards.

Kristina Sergunova, advisor to the president of the Center for nuclear medicine of the National research center “Kurchatov Institute”, highlighted the issues of the quality of AI technologies in her speech. According to her, software based on such technologies carries a potential risk to people, the environment, tangible and intangible assets. At the same time, having a well-built quality assessment allows you to increase confidence in AI systems at the physical level by confirming the requirements for reliability, safety and functionality.

For this, the subcommittee “Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare” (PC 01) of TC 164 has developed drafts of seven national standards in the field of medicine, which, among other things, cover the requirements for a quality management system, technical / clinical trials and post-registration monitoring. Kristina Sergunova also noted the importance of creating a unified high-level standard that could systematize knowledge in the field of assessing the quality of AI systems – a draft of such a standard has already been developed.

Alexey Sulavko, senior researcher at the Department of integrated information security, Omsk State Technical University, highlighted the issue of standardization as a factor in ensuring the functional safety of AI. “Today, standards for the automatic learning of artificial neural networks and the protection of knowledge of artificial neural networks are only in Russia: one standard has been adopted, one is under public discussion in another committee [TC 362], and we [TC 164] are now developing one. These standards are not found anywhere else in the world. In this, Russia occupies an absolutely leading position, and this position must be promoted,” the speaker believes.

Yuri Hohlov also participated with questions and comments in the sessions “Digital transformation of construction, urban economy and housing and communal services. Digital Transformation Experience” and “Artificial Intelligence. Implementation in industries on the example of industry”.

The last session discussed barriers to the adoption of AI in industry. According to Yuri Hohlov, one of the most important barriers is the lack of regulation of the economic turnover of industrial data in Russia. In fact, the use of industrial data in the country is not banned, but is in a gray zone. The expert urged to pay attention to the experience of Europe in building industry-wide and European integrated data spaces (primarily industrial).

“The European Union realized that they had lost the race in dealing with large amounts of personal data to the United States and China. All they have left so far is to stay on top of the wave in working with industrial data. Europeans have adopted their strategy for working with data quite recently, have developed new bills to bring industrial data into circulation. We must also move in this direction as quickly as possible. And this is not only about the development of a law on industrial data, which has just begun to be discussed. There are many other points that actually do not provide us with the opportunity to use industrial data,” said Yuri Hohlov.

Source: Big data storage and analytics center at Lomonosov Moscow State University

On May 31, 2021, a round table “Data law and data rights: state regulation policy” was held in offline and online formats. The event was organized by the National Center for Digital Economy of the Lomonosov Moscow State University (NСDE MSU), the host organization for the NTI Competence Center for Big Data Storage and Analytics Technologies, as well as the Institute of Law and Public Policy and the Institute of the Information Society (IIS).

“The title of the round table contains two semantic parts of the event. The first part will be devoted directly to the regulation of data circulation, big data – how is it done in Russia, what is the foreign experience of such regulation … In the second part we will discuss the question of how data can help develop law and law enforcement practice, “- said the moderator of the round table Sergey Afanasyev, NСDE MSU leading specialist.

Yuri Hohlov, Chairman of the IIS Board of Directors, project leader for Monitoring and Standardization of Big Data at the NTI Big Data Competence Center, Moscow State University, made a presentation on the national policy of working with data in Russia. “The situation in Russia is such that we are not yet globally competitive either in the market for working with personal data or in the market for working with industrial data (that is, data used in industrial production, agriculture, healthcare, etc.)” , – said the speaker. In this regard, in his opinion, it is extremely important to form a national state policy on working with data in the Russian Federation, to develop tools for the implementation of such a policy.

“The tasks of forming a national policy and its implementation are the primary tasks that need to be solved now, including within the framework of the strategy of socio-economic development of Russia until 2030 being developed today. In a number of areas, in an explicit form, it is necessary to take into account the possibilities that digital technologies and data processed with the help of these technologies bring,” Yuri Hohlov noted.

He added: “The issue related to national security and industrial data management, the further, the more will come to the fore, primarily for the Europeans and here in the Russian Federation. Therefore, the presence of a targeted state policy, supported by an appropriate national strategy and action plan for its implementation, is one of the challenges for the Russian Federation, both for government of the country, business, civil society and the academia).”

Yaroslav Eferin, World Bank digital transformation consultant, shared that, according to the IDC forecast, the global volume of data will grow five to six times in five years. “The important point is to extract value from this data, which is collected in such large volumes, and use it in the interests of citizens, governments, private business, the scientific community, in order to receive digital dividends. Of course, the state plays a special role here as a key agent of the entire ecosystem and the main regulator making strategic decisions in this area … In particular, the state solves a number of moral problems – what we call data ethics,” the speaker said. He explained that in most countries data ethics are not documented and are at the level of expert discussions.

In his report, Yaroslav Eferin noted the growing number of artificial intelligence (AI) and data strategies around the world: at least 50 countries have already developed or are developing their own strategies.

National data policy aims to ensure and maintain trust in the data ecosystem and related institutions. In particular, at the legal level, this is facilitated by laws on the protection of personal data, cybersecurity, open data, as well as individual laws and regulations.

The World Bank has developed a conceptual framework for national policy analysis that contains three fundamental elements: the value of data, trust in data, and data as infrastructure. This conceptual framework is presented in the World Bank’s report on data policy in Russia. The presentation of the report is scheduled for June 2021.

Nikolai Dmitrik, head of the laboratory of legal informatics and cybernetics at the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University, raised the question of who sets the rules for working with data, expressing an alternative point of view relative to the previous report. “The rules for working with data are not currently set by the state … Why did the state regulation suddenly break down? Because each state, trying to regulate data, establishes rules that insist on its own exclusivity: Russia applies the federal law “On Personal Data”; Europe – GDPR; USA – the laws of the state where the relationship takes place; PRC – the civil code, etc. Everyone pretends that they are exclusive, that only they act, thus nullifying each other,” the speaker said.

In his opinion, the issue of data regulation requires interaction at the international level. “Interaction is needed. It should be aimed at such an important theoretical category as legal certainty, when everyone intuitively and organically understands what to do … In the case of international regulation, we need to use international instruments. For Russia, this is the Eurasian Economic Union, where we can develop our own international instruments for the policy of working with data,” Nikolai Dmitrik is sure.

This was followed by a discussion of the participants of the round table. In particular, a leading researcher at the Institute of Management Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an expert of the project on monitoring and standardization of big data of the NTI Competence Center for Big Data of Moscow State University, a member of the IIS Supervisory Board, Alexander Raikov, spoke at it. He proposed criteria and principles for evaluating data in Russia: strategic, correct, completeness, cognitive, convergence. “Data should create conditions for the implementation of the country’s development strategy,” concluded Alexander Raikov.

In the second part of the event, Roman Smirnov, head of information technology and data science at the NTI Competence Center for Big Data at Moscow State University, spoke about how modern text recognition technologies can contribute to the development of machine-readable law.

In particular, the Center’s team has developed a solution capable of classifying and verifying documents based on natural language processing (NLP) and graphical recognition technologies. The combination of these technologies helps the machine to classify even visually indistinguishable documents (for example, an organization’s charter, invoice, sales contract, lease, etc.). Verification means checking whether a document meets certain requirements (for example, whether it contains seals and signatures in the required places).

One of the options for using the development is to create a smart legal assistant for entrepreneurs and citizens. Such a program, based on the correspondence with the user, forms a simple and correct answer to legal questions. The assistant’s work algorithm assumes that the incoming request is first recognized, then the necessary information is requested (including documents according to a specific list with checking their content), then, based on the information received, a draft response document is automatically generated with the ability to assess legal risks.

Training neural networks on data arrays of legislation and law enforcement practice using NLP also allows you to get closer to machine-readable law. For example, the Center’s team has created a model capable of extracting the following data from the texts of court decisions: the defendant, the article for which he was prosecuted, year, sentence, region, city, etc. These results can be used to form knowledge bases (for example, high-quality and reliable statistics), creation of training simulators, monitoring of changes in legislation.

Igor Tereshchenko, head of the direction of legal research and legal support of the NTI Competence Center for Big Data at Moscow State University, said that data analysis is already used in US criminal law, in the same country there are databases for the implementation of regulations, document classification, etc. Programs supporting adoption solutions allow judges to minimize the number of routine tasks and concentrate on more creative ones. “Replacing a judge with a completely artificial intelligence is ruled out, since it is still only an auxiliary tool,” Igor Tereshchenko explained.

In Russia, AI is being used in pilot mode at three judicial districts in the Belgorod region. The technology is used to prepare orders for the collection of property, transport and land taxes.

Automation of law is inevitable, Igor Tereshchenko is sure. It will help to truly implement the principles of legal certainty and consistency.

The full-fledged appearance of machine-readable law, according to the speaker, requires a unified ontology – the highest level of formalization of knowledge for the presentation of legal norms in precise digital form. “Now the automation of law requires its own ontology, its own units, on which the legal norm will be based, formulated in a new way, in a new language, understandable to various machines and computer technologies. This is a very big problem that must be solved gradually and through the interaction of various parties,” Igor Tereshchenko believes.

At the current (initial) stage, when a unified ontology has not yet been created, the speaker sees the task of researchers in creating solutions similar to those described by Roman Smirnov. “When creating current solutions, we do not replace existing norms, we do not replace human language. We work with existing norms and language. This already helps to automate the right. In its full form, machine-readable law will, of course, presuppose a global ontology created by the efforts of many lawyers. I think this should be a distributed effort with access to a single infrastructure, where everyone can take part, working according to certain rules,” explained Igor Tereshchenko.

In turn, Yuri Hohlov, within the framework of the discussion, expressed doubt about the possibility and necessity of building such a global ontology and, on its basis, an ontology for regulating relations with the help of law. “It is necessary to start with the construction of ontologies of individual narrow subject areas (spheres of activity), which are much simpler, and the solution of such a problem is quite achievable in the foreseeable future, which cannot be said about the construction of an “ontology of everything”, the speaker believes.

Source: NСDE MSU, the NTI Competence Center for Big Data Storage and Analytics Technologies

On May 28, 2021, Yuri Hohlov, chairman of the Board of directors of the Institute of the Information Society answered to the questions of the host of the program “What does this mean?” Yuri Tamantsev on the RBC TV channel in a live broadcast.

The presenter noted that artificial intelligence is already among us and that all this resembles the plot of a science fiction film. But what kind of film will it be – a drama, an action movie, a horror or an adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopia “1984”, but only in real life? That this could become a reality as early as 2024, says Microsoft President Brad Smith. Artificial intelligence will soon be difficult to catch up, he said. China may become the world leader in AI in the coming years, and its capabilities here already exceed those of the European Union. What to do if AI gets out of control, whether the world plunges into the abyss of digital lawlessness – such questions are of concern to many today. The chairman of the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, warned that the democratic world simply needs to surpass China in the field of AI. To this end, he proposes to pool resources to develop appropriate national and global strategies. Otherwise, in his opinion, we will have to get used to completely different, imposed values.

The presenter asked Yuri Hohlov if Mr. Smith’s fears that the decisive role of the state in the field of artificial intelligence was a threat to democracy around the world were true. At the same time, only appropriate laws can protect society from this, and they will be adopted by the state, too. There is a certain contradiction here.

Yuri Hohlov replied that laws are not adopted by the government, but by legislative bodies, which are formed from representatives of various strata of society. These are not executive bodies, although they also play a very important role here. It is not only the state that can protect us. Laws only formalize what happens in real life, that is, the practice of relations between subjects. Everything depends on what kind of relationship we will establish among us and what kind of relationship we can realize. And technologies are neutral – they can be used for good and for evil, including artificial intelligence technologies. As for Smith’s claim, the United States is indeed losing the race to develop artificial intelligence technologies to China. They have fundamentally different political systems, and he understands well that whoever becomes a leader in the technological field will promote his ideas about how life is arranged correctly. It is not possible to stop China: no restrictions and sanctions help. The alarmist statements of American entrepreneurs and scientists are primarily related to their desire for the American government to support American high-tech business more. And this support is expressed not only in money, there are other measures as well.

Another question of the presenter was related to the need to regulate the development and application of artificial intelligence technologies.

Yuri Hohlov expressed the opinion that regulation is to some extent necessary, but it still will not put all barriers to the use of these technologies. It depends on many factors – after all, we can use them as we like: even for military purposes, even for peaceful purposes, and here it is not a matter of technology or even of the laws that we will write.

Further, the presenter asked if artificial intelligence really exists and what machines, more precisely programs, can do today.

Yuri Hohlov tried to dispel fears and concerns: we will not see the skynet for a very long time. The so-called general or strong artificial intelligence will not be created in the coming decades. We can solve certain tasks, for example, face recognition, which is so much talked about today. Or tasks related to the possibility of algorithmic calculations of games, such as chess or go. Here the computer is obviously stronger than the human, because today’s computing power and algorithms already allow working out game solutions much faster than humans.

The presenter also asked a joking question whether a machine can solve a problem that a human solves almost every day: go there, I don’t know where, and bring that, I don’t know what.

Yuri Hohlov reacted that AI would definitely not be able to solve such a problem, but it could quite successfully solve the problem “go there and buy this”. And this is already happening before our eyes.

The recording of the program and the interview with Yuri Hohlov can be viewed on the website of the RBC TV channel (in Russian).

The forum, organized by the Free Economic Society of Russia, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the International Union of Economists, began its work on May 26, 2021. This year the Forum was dedicated to the theme “Global transformation of modern society and national development goals of Russia”.

The forum was opened by its co-chairs – President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeyev and President of the Free Economic Society of Russia, President of the International Union of Economists Sergey Bodrunov.

Alexander Sergeyev noted that the Moscow Academic Economic Forum is dedicated to finding new opportunities for the development of the Russian economy and how to use them correctly.

“The COVID time had a significant impact on economic processes, some of the problems worsened, some, on the contrary, were resolved faster. In a sense, there was a breakdown from the trajectory of slow development and a transition to another, the characteristics of which we cannot yet clearly define. We are the architects of a new trajectory for economic development. Much will depend on new decisions being made in the economy. In the course of their formation, a wide range of professional opinions is in great demand,” said the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Sergey Bodrunov emphasized that the MAEF traditionally brings together experts and scientists from the regions of Russia and foreign countries. 3,000 experts joined the forum. The total number of participants is 7,500 people, including experts and scientists from 32 countries. The President of the VEO of Russia also said that 63 regional sites in 41 constituent entities of the Russian Federation operated within the framework of the forum from 17 to 25 May.

At the opening of the MAEF, the expansion of its architecture was announced. So, within the framework of the MAEF, the following annual industry and thematic forums will start working: the Arctic Academic Forum, the Eurasian Academic Economic Forum, the Agrarian Economic Forum, the Ural Economic Forum, the Energy Forum, the International Ufa Humanitarian Scientific Forum, the Historical and Philosophical Academic Forum, the Forum “Communications and development of modern society ”, International Tourism Forum. This will increase the forum’s expert potential, strengthen the consolidated position of the scientific and expert communities on issues of socio-economic development.

On the first day of the forum, the winners and laureates of the XXIV All-Russian competition of scientific works of youth “Economic Growth of Russia”, organized by the Free Economic Society of Russia with the participation and support of the International Union of Economists, the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Economic Newspaper. The young people were congratulated and presented with diplomas and mementos by the President of the VEO of Russia Sergey Bodrunov, the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeyev and the Vice-President of the VEO of Russia, the Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasian Economic Commission, Sergey Glazyev.

Then a plenary session (recording of a live broadcast) took place, at which a number of well-known Russian scientists and experts spoke.

On May 27, 2021, the MAEF-2021 plenary conferences (live recording) were held at the venues of the leading universities in Moscow:

• Alternatives to the socio-economic development of Russian society (Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation)
• Digital transformation of the economy: redesigning our future or evolution of standard models? (Plekhanov Russian University of Economics)
• Global socio-economic transformations: the future of Russia “(V International Political and Economic Congress) (Moscow School of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University)
• The new role of agriculture in the modern economy and the priorities of Russia’s agricultural policy (online format)
• Digital transformation and artificial intelligence: is a machine uprising possible? – The view of generation Z (Moscow Aviation Institute).

The final plenary session and summing up of the results of the forum (recording of the live broadcast) were held in the congress hall of the Free Economic Society of Russia.

General director of the Institute of the Information Society Tatiana Ershova was invited to participate in the third international Moscow Academic Economic Forum. She attended the first plenary session, which took place on May 26, 2021 in the large conference hall of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and then watched the forum remotely.

More details about the forum are available on the MAEF website.

On May 25, a discussion day “Topical issues of data regulation and development of anonymization methods in Russia” was held. The event was organized by the Big Data Association (ADB) and the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence (AI Alliance) in partnership with the National Center for Digital Economy of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, the base organization for the NTI Competence Center for Big Data, and the Institute of the Information Society (IIS). The discussion day was attended by representatives of state authorities, business and academia. In particular, Yuri Hohlov, chairman of the IIS Board of directors, head of the Big Data Monitoring and Standardization Project at the NTI Competence Center for Big Data, made a presentation.

The main goal of the event was to provide an opportunity for participants to exchange expert opinions on the most important issues of data regulation in the Russian Federation and then identify areas for further discussion and possible steps to develop the most balanced approach to solving problems in this area, the organizers shared.

The event was attended by representatives of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia, the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), ANO “Digital Economy”, the Analytical Center for the Government of the Russian Federation, the Institute for Internet Research, the Russian Academy of Cryptography, the Institute of Digital Environment Law of the Higher School of Economics, member companies of the AI ​​Alliance ABD, as well as scientific and R&D oragnizations.

The discussion day was devoted to the current aspects of anonymization of personal data, which is the defining procedure for increasing the availability of data in order to develop AI technologies. During the event, experts discussed international experience and jurisprudence in the field of big data; international approaches to the regulation of data anonymization; security of AI systems and methods of depersonalization; possible models of depersonalization; international and national data standards; national policy of working with data in the Russian Federation, including existing problems, gaps, as well as prospects for the development of this area.

The discussion was moderated by Anna Serebryanikova, president of the ADB, and Andrei Neznamov, managing director and head of the AI ​​Regulation Center of Sberbank, head of the working group on regulation of the AI ​​Alliance.

The leitmotif of the discussion was the thesis that initiatives related to the use and regulation of anonymized data are primarily designed to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens. Anna Serebryanikova said: “The key value of anonymized data is that with its help it is possible to significantly increase the security of citizens and their personal data (by limiting the use of the second). That is why it is very important to discuss approaches and methods of anonymization at all levels and reach a consensus on the regulation of anonymization as soon as possible. Creation of a trusted environment and testing of methods of depersonalization within the framework of experimental legal regimes are also important conditions.”

Andrey Neznamov noted the importance of developing data regulation for AI technologies: “It is extremely important for Russia to find the most balanced approach to the development of data regulation, as it affects all new technologies, primarily artificial intelligence. It is necessary to ensure a high level of protection of the rights of citizens and at the same time create conditions for the secure use of data for the development of machine learning. The opportunity to find such a balance is created in a dialogue between all interested parties. This was the purpose of our event”.

Yuri Hohlov, chairman of the IIS Board of directors, project manager of the NTI Competence Center for Big Data at Moscow State University made the report “National policy of working with data in the Russian Federation. International and national standards in the field of data” (in Russian).

Sources: Alliance of AI, NTI Competence Center for Big Data at MSU.

On May 17, 2021, the Vedomosti newspaper in the Technologies section published an article by Valery Kodachigov “The Ministry of Digital Development Proposes to Create a Government Big Data Operator”. The author writes: “The government will provide big data accumulated by ministries and departments to commercial developers of artificial intelligence (AI). Such a proposal is contained in a preliminary version of the concept of access to government data sets, presented by the Ministry of Digital Development at a meeting of the working group of the ANO Digital Economy. A specialized agency will provide access to government big data – in the draft concept it is called the operator of government data sets. It will form data sets based on the requests of AI developers, carry out their anonymization and depersonalization, and will also ensure the creation and operation of infrastructure for access to government data sets. Also, the government operator will decide what data can be provided to a particular customer. For example, big data with varying degrees of secrecy will be shared with organizations accredited by specialized agencies (for example, the Federal Security Service), as it follows from the materials of the Ministry of Digital Development”.

The newspaper’s editors asked Yuri Hohlov, chairman of the Board of the Institute of the Information Society, for a comment on this publication. According to him, “there are several approaches to providing access to government data in the world: the United States adheres to decentralized access to such data, including by attracting non-government operators to ensure the functioning of government systems; in China, on the contrary, access is strictly centralized; in the EU it is also planned to develop the market, first of all, for industrial data by creating intermediary companies that will provide secure access, including to government big data. Russia needs to choose something from this or form its own national model for providing access to government data sets. One operator of government data sets in Russia is clearly not enough – he alone will not be able to guarantee the quality of data sets formed from the information systems of numerous departments. The quality of the data should be the responsibility of those authorities and local self-governments where this data is generated within the government functions or as a part of the provision of services”.

Source: Vedomosti

Illustration: Evgeny Razumny / Vedomosti

Theme: “Accelerating Digital Transformation in challenging times​”​. ​​
World Telecommunication and Information Society Day ​(WTISD) has been celebrated annually every 17 May since 1969 to mark the founding of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the signing of the first International Telegraph Convention in 1865.

The COVID-19 crisis has not only highlighted the critical role of information and communication technologies for continued functioning of societies but has also brought to the fore the startling digital inequalities between and within countries.

ITU Members have stepped up and engaged in activities that have proven essential in saving lives and sustaining economies. They have demonstrated their remarkable resilience in the face of challenging times. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgency of accelerating digital transformation and advancing the goals and targets of the Connect 2030 Agenda to leave no one behind.

WTISD 2021 is an opportunity for all to continue to push for digital transformation by promoting national strategies on ICT development, smart policies to encourage investments, cooperation, and partnership. ITU invites you to actively participate in commemorating the theme of WTISD 2021, “Accelerating Digital Transformation in challenging times​”​, throughout the year with national, regional, and international initiatives to accelerate digital transformation as highlighted in the Call to Action​.​

The Institute of the Information Society congratulates all colleagues, partners and friends on the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day and wishes every success in our common endeavor!

On May 13, 2021, in accordance with the Regulations on the Management System for the Implementation of the National Program “Digital Economy of the Russian Federation”, approved by Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 234 of March 2, 2019, a new membership of the “Artificial Intelligence” working group of ANO “Digital Economy” was approved.

The working group is headed by Andrey Belevtsev, head of the directorate for digital transformation of Gazpromneft, and Alexey Sidoryuk, director for artificial intelligence, development director of ANO “Digital Economy”, became the deputy head of the working group.

The working group includes representatives of leading digital economy companies and centers of competence, representatives of state authorities and development institutions, as well as representatives of the expert community – a total of 40 people. Among them is Yuri Hohlov, chairman of the Board of directors of the Institute of the Information Society.