The Institute of Contemporary Development held a roundtable discussion entitled “Information Technologies for Interaction between Citizens and State Authorities. Solutions to the Tasks Set by the State Council of Russia.”

The roundtable was chaired by Ilya Ponomarev, a State Duma deputy and the head of the Subcommittee on Technological Development of the Duma’s Committee on Information Policy. A working group elaborated the major components of the draft “Concept for the Development of a Main Information System for Interaction between the State and Citizens.”

Vladimir Arlazarov, the General Director of Cognitive Technologies and an associate member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, proposed the draft Concept during the roundtable discussion. He noted that the objective of the Concept is to formalize state-citizen relations and to organize dialogue between them using information technologies as based on form turnover. The proposal is to develop an integrated state information system for interaction between the state and citizens.

According to the document, it is necessary to develop a single state register form, which should be categorized according to a particular sphere of activity and reduced to a single sample, after which the complete automation of the work becomes possible. A major advantage of the form turnover would be a major reduction in the time of interaction between citizens and officials, as well a simplification of the entire procedure.

According to the Concept developers, transition to the form turnover would save RUB 10 to 30 trillion nationwide.

The draft Concept is to be submitted for extensive discussion among specialized agencies, the Russian Academy of Sciences, ICT, the expert community and other stakeholder organizations.

The Concept developers plant to submit the final document to RF President Dmitry Medvedev by the end of 2008.