The Ministry of Digital Development is looking for new users for 312,000 tablets running the Russian Aurora operating system that were used in the 2021 census, Kommersant reported, citing a government source. According to him, new owners for the tablets must be found before September 1, but government agencies are not ready to take them in their current state.
The interlocutor of the publication said that the Ministry of Internal Affairs will accept tablets only after a significant improvement: the device must be integrated with the information system for supporting the activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, have applications for the traffic police and a fingerprint sensor.
In Rosstat, the publication was informed that before March 1, the department should remove information from the tablets after the census and transfer them to the Ministry of Digital Development. In the office of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, the publication was told that the Ministry of Digital Transformation, as part of the presidential order, is working on the transfer of tablets purchased for the population census. The Ministry of Digital Transformation said that they are discussing with departments that are potentially ready to pick up the devices, including with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The latter did not respond to the publication’s request.
The second interlocutor of the publication said that the tablets could be transferred to the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education, but they also believe that the devices cannot be used in their current state, and the development and installation of special applications on Aurora could take more than a year. The Ministry of Health told the publication that they are considering the use of such tablets in medical organizations. The Ministry of Education did not respond to a request.
Experts noted that the development of applications for the Aurora OS can take up to two years, and during this time the devices will become obsolete. If ministries already have apps for Android, tablets could simply install the operating system.
The Avrora OS has already been installed on 360,000 tablets for the population census, which was planned for 2020, but was postponed to 2021. In 2017, Russian Post purchased 15,000 devices on it, and in November 2019 Russian Railways announced that it designs smartphones at Aurora.