The Russian authorities have redesigned most of the country’s prior e-government plans with new deadlines, Russian business daily Vedomosti reported last week. The unexpected rewind appears to throw the project back to its 2009 starting point, calling off the 2014 target for the endeavor to come online.
Not only is the deadline for completion of the project being postponed to Dec. 31, 2018. In a surprising U-turn from the prior policy of gradually increasing the number of e-services on Gosuslugi.ru, the portal developed to interact with Russian citizens, the deadlines are reportedly suggested for only 35 services, down from 129 services initially planned.
Now citizens can receive only 3.3% of federal services and a negligible 1.1% of regional ones from the total number of services originally intended, the Russian online publication Lenta.ru reported from an unofficial Ministry source.
E-government was masterminded in 2008 as a means of facilitating interdepartmental interaction between government agencies and streamlining the offering of government services to Russian citizens via cloud-based multifunctional centers. In a country where waiting in endless bureaucratic lines has become custom over decades of inefficient governance, that sounded like a huge reform.
The program appeared to be making good headway – only to reveal some fundamental snags and deficiencies last year. The government had to admit that the entire undertaking “is abysmally behind schedule” – a result of at least two major deferrals in deadlines, both initial (July 2012) and revised (December 2012), set by federal law for the regions to fully embrace electronic interaction.
A 10.4 billion ruble (around $300 million) injection has been allocated to Russia’s federal budget for the limping effort over 2014-2016, following investments of 4.2 billion rubles (around $135 million) in 2011-2013, according to Lenta.ru.
