A widely touted nationwide e-government system, designed to facilitate interdepartmental interaction between government agencies and streamline the offering of government services to Russian citizens, seems to have barely progressed in the past year.
The Ministry of Economic Development of Russia reported last week the results of its latest August monitoring of the e-government Gosuslugi.ru portal, supposed to enable people to submit requests, documents, or applications electronically for a total of 745 various federal services without any paperwork or visits to state authorities.
According to the report, the entire e-government program is abysmally behind schedule.
As of last week, the program supported less than one-third of planned services, and only 32 these services could be reached 100% electronically. Most of the 745 e-services published on Gosuslugi are at most 51% ready for the functions the system was expected to have fully debugged and launched by the end of last year.
According to the Russian Government’s timeline, all federal services must not only be fully accessible electronically but also be easily monitored by applicants as of January 1, 2014.
From a rolling stone to a moss-gatherer?
A comprehensive IT-enabled cloud-based platform offered to Russia’s regions on a SaaS basis, e-government was viewed from the very beginning as a shortcut to improving the Russian government’s dialog with the nation.
All seemed to go well at the inception stage. The Kremlin even intended in 2011 to export the Russian e-government model to other emerging economies, emphasizing its cost-effectiveness and pointing out that it was based on advanced cloud technologies. In April 2012, Rostelecom, the national telecom operator appointed to implement the ambitious $150 million program, said it was nearing the finish line with 70 out of 83 Russia’s regions linked to the system.
However, a range of circumstances apparently emerged later on to throw a wrench in the works. The project failed to meet both initial (July 2012) and revised (December 2012) deadlines set by federal law for the regions to fully embrace electronic interaction.
In what may look like a huge waste of effort, Russia pushed a universal electronic card (UEC) endeavor. Signed into law in 2010 by then President Dmitry Medvedev to become a “primary ID card” for all Russians, the UEC downshifted early this year to an optional card. The card now has unlikely prospects of becoming truly universal due to the prohibitive cost of its sweeping introduction in cash-strapped regions. Furthermore, many of the UEC functions are expected to be taken over by special plastic ‘passport’ cards that will start replacing paper IDs in Russia as of January 1, 2015.
