Participants of the Digital Evolution forum, which ended yesterday, called the main problems of the digitalization process in the country an acute shortage of qualified IT personnel, an underestimation of demand for electronic services during a pandemic (which led to a failure on the portal of state services) and a greatly increased interest of fraudsters in accounts on “State services” … The Ministry of Digital Security assures that problems with failures and fraud are being successfully solved, and that it will take more time and money to eliminate staff shortages. In particular, it is proposed that regional developers who are now actively leaving for Moscow are kept in place by special mortgage programs.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, who is in charge of digitalization, addressed the participants of the forum in Kaluga in the format of a video message. He noted that all regions must approve their digital transformation strategies by September 1. Federal ministries and departments have already completed this task, he said.
Maksut Shadayev, the head of the Ministry of Digital Science, recalled why, in fact, from the point of view of government processes, digital transformation is needed – in addition to reducing the size of the state apparatus, ensuring mobility and increasing fees due to more efficient administration technologies, it has two more aspects: an increase in the level of security and a new quality of delivery. services to citizens. The latter is achieved due to the possibility of receiving services remotely, reducing the time for their provision and decreasing subjectivity in decision-making due to rigid algorithmic processes (the concept of “official-robot”).
The minister warned that the pressure of the center on those who do not want to transform will not weaken.
“If a department or a region wants to change, we will always help, and if in general it doesn’t want to, then we will have to force it. This, unfortunately, is probably one of the negative manifestations of digital transformation, because in a certain sense it is still a pressure, and this pressure from our side will definitely continue, “the head of the department emphasized.
Answering the question of the plenary session moderator, InfoWatch president Natalya Kasperskaya about mistakes on the way to digital transformation, Maksut Shadayev said that they were primarily associated with an underestimation of the demand for electronic services during the pandemic. He recalled the failure that occurred on the public services portal in May 2020, which lasted almost a day. “This is probably one of the most painful stories when we are faced with the fact that people who are entitled to benefits want to issue them as quickly as possible. And we could not stand this load, ”he admitted. After that, work was carried out to modernize, scale and even rewrite the e-government infrastructure. At the same time, the minister noted, it completely got rid of imported software.
The second problem is the large number of attempts at fraudulent actions against users of public services. “We completely changed the algorithm for changing accounts, strengthened the measures associated with the second confirmation factor. It was a new reality for us when we realized that the accounts on “State Services” are of great value and they are being hunted down, ”said Maksut Shadayev.
Finally, the third and perhaps the most acute problem of digitalization is the lack of personnel in the IT industry.
There is a lot of competition for them, salaries are growing, but there is absolutely not enough people, the minister explained. He recalled that the government supported the proposal to give high school students the opportunity to learn modern programming languages. In addition, digital departments will be opened in key universities, and students will be able to receive, in addition to the main specialty, a second one related to IT. At the same time, according to Maksut Shadayev, the problem associated with the massive departure of programmers abroad has already lost its acuteness. Developers’ salaries within the country are growing and in some regions have already reached the level of foreign ones. However, now the developers are leaving for Moscow, where the demand for them is especially high. The idea voiced yesterday is to keep specialists in the field through special mortgage programs. The Governor of the Kaluga Region Vladislav Shapsha spoke about the draft regional law on compensation of the mortgage rate for such specialists. “This is not a 100% guarantee, but one of the elements that can play a role,” the head of the region noted.
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