KEY CONCLUSIONS
Data accumulated by government agencies is an important tool for business development and improving public administration
«An effective national strategy cannot be implemented without the active position of the state in terms of data harmonization and opening large data arrays for business use and building super services, in particular [...] And we believe that later this will lead to the ability for the state to make decisions on the basis of the conclusions that we can make based on the accumulated data», said Mikhail Nasibulin, Director of the Department of Communications and Mass Media for the Coordination and Implementation of Digital Economy Projects.
«One of the reasons why we start talking about national strategies of this kind is the explosive growth in the amount of data. Ninety percent of the data with which we work today has only appeared in the last 2 years [...] If you look at the dozen or so companies that have the largest capitalization — I’m referring to global companies, seven of these dozens are companies whose work is based on data, while five 5 of them are companies that use platform solutions», said Andras Horvai, Country Director and Resident Representative for the Russian Federation, Europe and Central Asia at the World Bank Group.
«We have entered an era of unprecedented accumulation and unprecedented volumes of data, and we understand that a person’s value is largely determined by the data that he is able to transfer to this vast ocean based on which numerous decisions are made fr om an analysis — from diagnosing diseases to issuing a bank loan [...] Today, the state is an unprecedented data repository above all else», Forbes Editorial Director Nikolay Uskov said.
«The big data market will reach RUB 300 billion by 2024 [...] At present, it is worth RUB 10 billion to RUB 30 billion, according to various estimates. This is ultimately explosive growth. GDP will grow by 1.5% over the same period from the use of different models using big data and artificial intelligence», said Anna Serebryannikova, President of the Big Data Association and a Member of the Board of Directors of MegaFon.
The Russian government is a trendsetter in the introduction of digital technologies
«This year, five basic experiments are to be carried out [...] This will enable us to proceed with the more extensive implementation of the components of the National Data Management System next year. Over the course of this year, within the framework of a regulatory sandbox and rather specific individual information sources, an attempt will be made to implement a mechanism that can then, if it proves to be successful, be implemented in all information systems that are accessible to the state», said Vladislav Onishchenko, Head of the Analytical Centre under the Government of the Russian Federation.
«The digital technologies introduction index: we analysed roughly 180 countries, and of these, the Russian Federation ranked 28th in this index. In terms of the state and its readiness for the introduction of digital technologies, Russia ranked 18th out of 180 countries. We see that the state has achieved rather good results. The next step will be an attempt to pull the population and business up to this level», Horvai said.
Data quality has become a key issue
«Data plays a key role in digital public administration. First of all, everything that we introduce and all the super services that we can provide all depend on the quality of the data and on the systems that record them. We, as probably the main ideologist of the national data management system, will above all pay attention to the quality of data, harmonize the data that is already recorded in different information systems, and establish order», Nasibulin said.
PROBLEMS
Problems of data quality and communication between information systems
«The problem of data quality in state information systems [...] and in the systems that business turns to when trying to verify the information required by law has not been solved and will not work without creating a national system», Onishchenko said.
«In Moscow, we have found that it is impossible to not use data from various state and information systems — gluing it together, re-checking it, modelling it, and re-checking it later with federal data. It simply makes no sense to physically accumulate it if we can’t overcome all these boundaries. Our hope is that the National Data Management System will be a success. And the main hope is that the National Data Management System will have a leader who breaks through all these departmental barriers», said Eduard Lysenko, Minister of the Government of Moscow, Head of the Department of Information Technologies of Moscow.
Inconsistencies between the regulatory framework and the objectives of the digital economy
«There are a lot of regulatory problems that hinder or, shall we say, significantly reduce the initiative to create a National Data Management System if it is implemented and reduce the effectiveness of its implementation», Onishchenko said.
Lack of qualified personnel
«Government agencies are not yet ready to work on the basis of digital data. We need competent personnel from the point of view of digitalization, and we need competent personnel who work with data», said Anton Drozdov, Chairman of the Board of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation.
SOLUTIONS
Creating a decentralized system, but according to general rules
«We are in favour of creating a decentralized system that will be called the National Data Management System and will integrate all decentralized systems that operate according to common rules, uniform requirements for information sources, and common rules for information exchange», Onishchenko said.
«We want to develop common rules based on which all data will be recorded and used and which different departments can use so that they are able to share it,» Nasibulin said.
«The availability of large data arrays — even in digital format — is not the same as real big data [...] A lot of work is needed in terms of creating unified repositories, creating directories, creating the integrations of various sources», Tele2 CEO Sergey Emdin said.
«[We need] to try to build a common methodological basis and to develop, at least in their initial version, uniform data requirements within information systems. During experiments, we also need to develop a methodology for assessing the quality of the data», Onishchenko said.
Creation of a unified principle for the National Data Management System to interact with other big data systems
«We are a big data holder [...] We are currently processing 350 million requests from 2,500 counterparties. These include the federal and regional authorities and about 40 million requests from citizens [...] We have combined our own data into databases [...] Now we have 155 million individual personal accounts and a single identifier [...] The next stage is artificial intelligence, and we already see such platforms for ourselves. Last year we tested the system of assigning pensions based on artificial intelligence [...] It’s a single contact centre, i.e. whenever and from wherever a person contacts us, he/she is identified using the identifiers that are employed», Drozdov said.
«The information we possess, and we deliver 450 million parcels and about 2 billion letters a year [...], we have all this information. We have information about 86 million addresses. This knowledge led us to actively collaborate with the Federal Tax Service, when we help clean the Federal Information Address System database in such a way as to make it more correct [...] We created the housing and public utilities geo-information system, which contains information about 95% of residential buildings in all of our country, wh ere it is possible to upload data on resource consumption [...] We could make a contribution to the National Data Management System, in particular at the junction of the digital and real world so that information can be obtained about the correct location of certain objects», Russian Post General Director Nikolay Podguzov said.
