Congratulations to all on World Telecommunication and Information Society Day
Dear colleagues, partners, friends!
May 17 has been World Telecommunication Day since 1969. This day was established by the Plenipotentiary Conference held in Malaga Torremolinos in 1973 to commemorate the founding of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the signing of the first International Telegraph Convention in 1865.
In November 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society called on the UN General Assembly to designate 17 May as World Information Society Day to highlight the importance of ICT for development and to focus on a wide range of issues related to the information society. In March 2006, the General Assembly adopted resolution 60/252, which established that World Information Society Day should be celebrated annually on 17 May.
In November 2006, at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Antalya (Turkey), it was decided to celebrate May 17 as World Telecommunication and Information Society Day. The updated resolution 60/252 invites Member States and sector members to commemorate this day every year through the organization of appropriate national programs.
The theme of World Telecommunication and Information Society Day 2023 is “Empowering Least Developed Countries through Information and Communication Technologies”. ITU, where Russia’s positions have traditionally been strong, is calling on the public and private sectors to commit to universal connectivity and digital transformation in these countries through its Partner2Connect digital coalition. ITU notes that investments in these young, dynamic countries can provide sustainable growth for generations.
We hope that ICT will be an effective instrument of development, not colonization. We strongly stand for a fair information society. Happy holiday!
Congratulations on the anniversary of the great Victory!
Dear colleagues, partners, friends!
Congratulations to all on the 78th anniversary of the great Victory over nazism. Let us honor the memory of all those who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, kneel before the living veterans of the war and those who helped achieve the Victory in the rear. Let us do our best to eradicate nazism that raised its head in the backyard of history and stop the unbridled hegemonism. We wish victory to those who are now courageously fighting on the fronts for our just cause.
I love old proverbs – even ours, Russians, even any other people. This is truly a mirror of deep folk wisdom. Take this one: “A good master is the master of money, and a bad one is a servant.” Bravissimo to the author! Whatever you insert into this proverb instead of “money”, everything will be true. For example, “ICT”. Or digital technology. Well, isn’t it?
I remember how, more than twenty years ago, theку was an campaign to “electronize” Russia. At international conferences, we only had time to fend off the nasty questions of foreign well-wishers, why we adopted a federal target program with an impressive budget, but did not bother to conduct an elementary assessment of the country’s readiness for electronic development. But since 1999, we have been hoarse to talk about it at every corner, only no one has listened to us. “Electronic Russia” sounded very fashionable, it was possible to raise good money on this – why think, you need to hammer! But we stubbornly promoted the idea of assessing the electronic readiness not only of the entire country, but also of its regions, and sectors of the economy, and, if necessary, even individual organizations, if they were seriously going to move to a new technological level.
Back in 1996, we did such a thorough job at the Russian State Library before entangling it with wires and filling it with computers. At the same time, mass “informatization” of libraries, schools, museums and other respected institutions began, but only in many of them computers stood and gathered dust, because they simply didn’t know how to use them and were afraid – suddenly you break an expensive thing! The fact that before the delivery of equipment it was necessary to train workers and take care of IT specialists was sometimes forgotten. The main thing was not to fall out of the trend. Of course, this was not the case everywhere, but campaigning, unprofessionalism and self-interest in this matter went off scale.
Since 2001 and until recently, many members of the Editorial Board of our journal have participated in the assessment of readiness for the information society in various aspects under the auspices of a number of organizations, in particular, the Institute of the Information Society, Rosatom State Corporation, ANO “Digital Economy” and others. Many people remember the well-known long-term series of Index of Russian Regions’ E-Readiness by the IIS. And the result of the participation of Russian specialists in the World Bank project in 2017 was the Digital Economy Country Assessment (DECA), which was officially recommended to all G20 countries as the basis for planning the development of the digital economy.
One of the thematic headings of our journal is “Measuring the Information Society”, and we strongly welcome articles on this topic. True, burdened with knowledge and experience in this area, we are very strict in their selection, but the rubric does not stand idle, and this is very pleasing. Today, a comprehensive model for monitoring the development of the information society in the broad sense of the word, including the development of the digital economy and digital transformation, continues to improve and keeps pace with the standardization processes in the development and use of digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence and data processing. All this allows us to hope for a masterly attitude towards these important things in our country. After all, in the current geopolitical situation, we have no other choice.
The event was held as part of the program of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science “Priority 2030” (national project “Science and Universities”, “Digital Economy”).
The plenary session discussed the development and implementation of artificial intelligence technologies in public administration, education, industry, medicine and other key sectors of the economy.
The moderator of the plenary session was Vladimir Nelyub, director of the REC “AI Technologies” of Bauman Moscow State Technical University.
The reports were presented by 16 speakers, in particular, Sergey Nakvasin, Director of the National Center for the Development of AI under the Government of the Russian Federation; Vladimir Dozhdev, Director of the Department of Digital Technologies of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia; Sergey Tokarev, Head of the Department of Professional Development of the Federal Tax Service; Alisa Melnikova, General Director of Sibur Digital; RAS academicians Igor Kalyaev and Alexey Semenov; Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Institute of the Information Society Yuri Hohlov and others.
Yuri Hohlov participated in the Enterprise Agile Russia show
The show on the topic “GOV-Agile 2.0” was held in person at the office of ANO “Digital Economy” with the support of GosTech. The show was hosted by Ruslan Yusupov, partner of ScrumTrek.
Experts from the mentioned organizations, as well as from the Analytical Center under the Government of the Russian Federation, the Digital Economy League, RTLabs and the Institute of the Information Society (IIS), recalled the history of the emergence of the GOV-Agile movement and the nomination for agile public administration in the Project Olympus competition in 2015-2020; listed those that appeared in 2020-2022; discussed opportunities for the use of agile approaches in public administration and the development of public information systems; expressed their views on the forthcoming development of agile public administration methods.
All performances can be viewed in video format. For convenience, a time code is indicated before the name of each expert.
00:01:20 Ilya Vinokurov, Deputy Head of the Department for Analysis of National Projects, Analytical Center under the Government of the Russian Federation The GOV-Agile movement was born in 2015, was supported by the Project Olympus competition in 2016-2019, but since 2020 there have been no new stories or government interest in agile. By 2023, the prerequisites for the revival of this interest appeared, because uncertainty has grown, examples of government contractors have appeared, GosTech has amended Government Decree #676 and issued methodological recommendations. The Analytical Center intends to check the presence of interest and agile management practices through the revival of the corresponding nomination in the competition and hopes for its support from ScrumTrek, FKU GosTech, ANO “Digital Economy” and the Ministry of Digital Development of Russia.
00:16:44 Vladimir Rakhmanov, ex-deputy director of FKU GosTech GosTech was conceived not only as a platform, but also as a provider of modern public administration practices. Within 1-2 years, the practice of developing governmental / regional information systems will probably appear in federal executive authorities and regional executive authorities, and in 5 years it will probably become the norm. Agencies that migrate to GosTech in the near future will face fewer challenges than those participating in the pilot and will therefore be able to shift their focus from resolving technical challenges to overhauling solution development processes and developing customer-centric practices.
00:27:51 Igor Khomich, expert of the Digital Economy League Integrators already have accumulated expertise in the transfer of IT solutions for executive authorities to GosTech and continue to do so. At the same time, they have been using flexible approaches in their activities since the late 2000s. Thanks to the provision of a full cycle of training by GosTekh, these practices will become increasingly common in executive authorities and their IT contractors.
00:39:34 Vasily Slyshkin, director of GosTech GosTech plans to transfer the solutions of about 20 state agencies to the platform by the end of 2023. They will operate in a service paradigm and use agile and client-centric approaches to increasingly show the economic impact of investing in these migration projects. The economic effect, national priorities, import dependence and the impact on the priority areas of the digital maturity of the regions will remain the key criteria for prioritizing decisions for the transfer to the GosTech. The benefits of increasing technological reliability and strengthening information protection, the availability of a knowledge base for the effective implementation of basic scenarios on the GosTech platform, as well as the acceleration of public procurement of cloud services (after changes are made to Federal Law #44) will likely allow an avalanche to speed up the transition of executive authorities to the platform and the spread of their use agile approaches in the development of governmental / regional information systems. This will make it possible to implement unscheduled requirements within months or weeks in rapidly changing conditions through the involvement of representatives of the state customer and development teams in close interaction.
01:04:44 Viktor Redrov, director of the RTLabs Agile-practitioner office The challenges of 2020 (the pandemic and the need to urgently implement related services) prompted RTLabs to look for an approach that allows it to fulfill its obligations under government orders and simultaneously implement unscheduled requirements. The company adapted the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to its specifics of working with the Ministry of Digital Development – together with the customer, it developed agile contracts, the content of which the customer can regularly adjust in accordance with changing priorities. Transparency is ensured by the joint work of representatives of the state customer and the contractor as part of cross-functional teams. The experience of building the RTLabs production system can be adopted by other companies with 100+ employees as part of interdependent teams. In 2023, RTLabs continues to improve the efficiency of its production system in iterative and incremental manner and is ready to share its experience with the industry.
01:18:24 Alexey Koretsky, RTLabs Production System Implementation Director
01:28:47 Yuri Hohlov, Chairman of IIS Board of Directors The development of flexible approaches in public administration should be expected primarily from circuits using ML and AI technologies; and the Moscow City Governmnet Department of Information Technology Department is the most experienced and successful testbed. The development of these practices can be facilitated by the appearance by 2024 on the GosTech platform of all tools for working with ML, primarily for use by functional customers in executive authorities in the Low-Code/No-Code paradigm. But for the mass introduction of agile approaches to public administration, it will first be necessary to remove a number of barriers, which presupposes the following: explicitly prescribe in the information society and digital economy development strategies the obligation to base the activities of officials on agile approaches, fix the use of agile approaches in standards, approve methods for calculating the effect of the introduction of agile methods. And when job descriptions are so adjusted, and the amount of time for training staff in their use will increase many times over, it will be possible to involve functional customers in work based on agile approaches. It will mean then that the use of agile methods by Russian civil servants would not only not be forbidden, but even prescribed.
Ruslan Yusupov and Yuri Hohlov
01:48:04 Ilya Vinokurov, Deputy Head of the Department for Analysis of National Projects, Analytical Center under the Government of the Russian Federation Prerequisites for the use of agile methods by officials: “it is possible” – Government Decree #676, methodological recommendations; “need” – client-centricity in the focus of the state; “it’s not scary” – examples of government agencies that have switched to GosTech. Since now the synonym for “Agile projects” seems to be “digital projects”, therefore, the AC invites ScrumTrek, ANO “Digital Economy”, GosTech, Ministry of Digital Development to become co-organizers of the agile management nomination in the Project Olympus competition. And the final of the competition is proposed to be held in November in St. Petersburg at the IT-Dialogue forum.
01:54:30 Sergey Cheremisin, Director of Regional Digital Development, ANO “Digital Economy” Taking into account the adoption of the Decree of the President “On the creation, development and operation of state information systems using the unified digital platform of the Russian Federation GosTech”, which prescribes the date of January 1, 2024 for regional information systems to migrate on GosTech and recommends that regional teams, developers and customers dedicate 2023 for preparation for this milestone – to go through training, to understand the issue, and to implement pilot projects.
Yuri Hohlov spoke at the XII International Scientific and Practical Conference named after A.I. Kitov
The XII International Scientific and Practical Conference named after A.I. Kitov “Information technologies and mathematical methods in economics and management” took place at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics on March 23-24, 2023. Leading Russian scientists and representatives of IT companies discussed the trends in the development of domestic technologies, as well as the creation and use of advanced information technologies and mathematical methods in economics, management and education.
“The conference is dedicated to two outstanding scientists — Anatoly Kitov and Viktor Glushkov, who made a significant contribution to the development of cyber technologies in our country. Today we not only pay tribute to their work, but also consider new trends in the development of domestic information technologies,” Vitaly Minashkin, Vice-Rector of the Russian University of Economics, noted at the plenary session.
The conference participants were academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences, representatives of leading Moscow universities and research centers. At the plenary session, the experts considered the problems of developing domestic technologies and methods for solving them, as well as issues related to the training of personnel in the field of IT.
“The primary task that we face is the training of professionals with the necessary set of knowledge and skills for the development of domestic cyber technologies. This is also important for the scientific community, so today I would like to pay special attention to the educational process,” said academician Igor Sokolov, Director of the Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Computer Science and Control”, Dean of the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics of Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Academician of the Russian Academy of Engineering Yuri Hohlov, Chairman of the Board of the Institute of the Information Society, spoke at the plenary session. He devoted his report to strategic planning for the digital transformation of economic sectors, sectors of the social sphere and the public administration system of the Russian Federation. Particular attention was paid to key factors influencing the digital development of the country, such as national policy and regulation, training and development of domestic digital technologies.
Meet the first issue of the Information Society journal for 2023!
The issue was released under the general theme “The public good is the highest priority of digitalization”.
In her address to readers, the editor-in-chief of the journal Tatiana Ershova wrote:
Political events greatly affected the work of publishing the journal. In response to Western sanctions against Russian scientists, the well-known government decree No. 414 of March 19, 2022 “On some issues of the application of requirements and target values of indicators related to publication activity” was issued, in which, until December 31, 2022, the requirements for the presence of publications indexed in the international databases Web of Science and Scopus, as well as the target values of the corresponding indicators were canceled. By new resolution No. 1655 of September 19, 2022, the specified period was extended until the end of 2023.
Almost the next day after the March decision, the life of our peaceful journal, which since 1999 published six to seven articles once every two months, changed dramatically. If earlier we turned to well-known authors with a request to write an article for a journal, or well-known people recommended trusted and highly respected scientists and experts, now everything has changed. We were literally overwhelmed by the flow of materials “from the street”. And it is clear why: the journal “Information Society” is old, reputed and respected in the field of information and communication technologies. In addition, articles here have always been published free of charge, and we, firmly professing the principle of open access to science, were not at all going to turn into businessmen.
The monstrous flow of texts baffled the editors: many of the materials were of unacceptable quality and immediately went to the wastebasket, many were interesting and useful, but required improvement, sometimes serious. And only a small part was of high quality and was accepted with gratitude. The big problem was the slovenliness of the submitters of manuscripts, who did not take the trouble not only to strictly follow the requirements of the Guidelines for Authors, but even to read them to the end. Things got to the point that over the past year 35% of the proposed materials were rejected – unprecedented! Moreover, 16% were rejected immediately, and 19% after the review. But the editors and our distinguished experts worked with each of them, wasting precious time. I even posted a call on the journal’s website to respect the journal and the time of staff and reviewers, but it seems to have only been read by conscientious authors who didn’t need it at all. So I didn’t achieve the result, and, perhaps, even offended good people.
What now? The editorial portfolio is jam-packed with hundreds of pieces. Reviewers who work unpaid for the benefit of science are groaning with overwhelm. Accepted articles – both of very high quality from the very beginning, and brought to the required condition after revision – have accumulated right up to the fifth issue, which will be released only on October 31. The number of articles in the issue has already doubled, but at the same time, a long queue has formed, the authors constantly write and call, we barely have time to issue certificates of acceptance of articles for publication. The editorial board, as they say, “sheathed”, even technical errors began to appear.
We are well aware that this cannot continue, and now we are at a crossroads: to return to the elite past with exclusive materials, or to turn the editorial office into a commercial enterprise. The latter is not very organic for us, so the choice of such a scenario is not easy. However, the year has begun. Let’s see how it turns out…
IIS congratulates its partners and colleagues on Defender of the Fatherland Day
Dear colleagues, partners and friends!
Congratulations on a glorious holiday – Defender of the Fatherland Day! May each of us contribute to our victory in the name of the peace and prosperity of Russia!
Yuri Hohlov spoke at a round table on data management on the GosTech platform
Representatives of the expert community in the field of data discussed methodological recommendations for managing GIS data on the GosTech platform.
Guidelines for data management on the GosTech platform were developed by a group that included representatives of the Ministry of Digital Development of Russia, Federal State Institution “State Technologies” (GosTech), Russian companies and non-profit organizations.
The task of the working group was to study international experience, best practices for data management of the largest companies, as well as adapt them to the public administration.
Grigory Borisenko, Deputy Head of the Ministry of Digital Development of Russia, who supervised the development of the document, commented that the draft document, which received the working title “Data Management Policy on the GosTech Platform”, is aimed at improving the quality and speed of digital public services, ensuring the transition to a data-based management model, as well as reducing the cost of data ownership at all stages of their life cycle.
“In addition to comprehensive regulatory regulation of data circulation within the public administration system, there is an uneven digital maturity of the landscape that we operate with. This, as well as the need to develop competencies in data management, including at the regional level, are taken into account in the plans for the implementation of this policy,” Borisenko added.
“Properly designed processes lie at the heart of data management,” highlighted Maksim Khaitovich, Advisor to the Director of GosTekh.
“The guidelines cover the tasks of data management at the strategic, operational and technological levels. The next step will be the adoption of data management regulations,” Haitovich said.
The experts who took part in the discussion of the guidelines assessed the timeliness of the document and made a number of recommendations for its improvement.
Director of the National Center for the Development of Artificial Intelligence under the Government of the Russian Federation (NTsRII) Sergey Nakvasin proposed creating a checklist based on methodological recommendations for those departments whose tasks in the near future include the creation of 80 datasets.
The expert community supported the GosTech initiative. The need to address several important issues was noted, including the lack of qualified personnel in the regions to replicate data management processes and the need to connect commercial companies to data exchange outside the state structures.
The need to regulate the work with data at the all-Russian level was also noted by Yuri Hohlov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Institute of the Information Society:
“It is necessary to develop and adopt a national strategy for working with data (including government data) for digital development, where the corresponding data management policy will be fixed, not only for government, but also for business and the non-profit sector,” the expert said.
Yuri Hohlov speaking at a roundtable on data management on the GosTech platform. February 17, 2023
Documents on data management on the GosTech platform – policies and regulations – are planned to be approved by the end of 2023.
The text of the guidelines for data management of state information systems created, developed and operated on the single digital platform “GosTech” is posted in the comments.
IIS took an active part in the work of the Technical committee for standardization of TC 164 “Artificial Intelligence” in 2022
As of the end of 2022, TC 164 embraces 63 organizations, including the Institute of the Information Society.
Thanks to the activities of the committee, 40 standardization documents have already been approved: 26 national and 14 preliminary national standards. Taking into account the previously developed volume, the national fund of standards in the field of AI amounted to 68 documents. The newly approved standards were developed by the Higher School of Economics, the Russian Institute for Standardization, the Scientific and Practical Clinical Center for Diagnostics and Telemedicine Technologies of the Moscow Health Department, the National Center for Digital Economy of Lomonosov Moscow State University, the GLONASS/GNSS-Forum Association, the Institute of the Information Society, the Artificial Intelligence Agency, the NNK Consulting company.
54 draft national standards have been developed:
At the expense of the federal budget, 46 documents were created (17 unique documents, 7 based on international standards, 22 qualimetric standards with test data sets). The Higher School of Economics, the National Center for Digital Economy of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Institute of the Information Society, Volgograd State University, St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University “LETI”, First Moscow State Medical University named after I.M. Sechenov, Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography, Artificial Intelligence Agency and NNK Consulting participated in the development of these documents.
8 documents were prepared at the expense of the organizations’ own funds. These organizations are: Yandex, the Higher School of Economics, the National Center for Digital Economy of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, Institute for the Development of the Information Society, National Research University ITMO, Omsk State University, NP RUSSOFT, GLONASS/GNSS-Forum Association and Ar Soft.
Russian experts from Lomonosov Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University “LETI”, Volgograd State University, the Institute of Philosophy and Law of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of the Information Society took part in the development of 23 draft international standards within the framework of the subcommittee SC42 “Artificial intelligence”.
Draft Roadmaps for standardization of AI in the field of education, transport and healthcare have been prepared. The Perspective Standardization Program in the priority area “Artificial Intelligence” for 2021-2024 has been updated, including the following sections: cross-industry standards, data, information infrastructure, information security, quality, use cases, road transport, air transport, education, healthcare, industry, measurements facilities and construction.
The work was carried out within the framework of the federal project “Artificial Intelligence” and in accordance with the Perspective Standardization Program in the priority area “Artificial Intelligence” for 2021-2024 and the National Standardization Program for 2022.
Let us recall that the Chairman of IIS Board of Directors of Yuri Hohlov acted in TC 164 as the chairman of the subcommittee 02 “Data”, and the head of the IIS Legal Programs Directorate Valentin Padzhev as one of SC2 “Data” key experts.
