Information about interruptions in the provision of electronic state services of the traffic police appeared in the morning of December 18. Due to a malfunction in the traffic police system on Saturday, residents of many cities of Russia, in particular St. Petersburg and Chelyabinsk, could not register cars and obtain a driver’s license. On December 18, in the afternoon, the publication “Ministry of Internal Affairs Media” reported that due to a technical failure in the work of information resources of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, there were malfunctions in the functioning of the federal information system of the traffic police. Regional divisions of the traffic police were forced to suspend the provision of state services to citizens related to the registration of motor vehicles, the issuance of driving licenses, as well as to restrict access to information on imposed administrative fines for traffic violations, the newspaper pointed out.
In the afternoon of December 19, the representative of the press center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Maksim Spesivtsev said that the cause of the failure was a communal accident in the server rooms. As a result, the servers on which the information arrays are stored in the line of work of the State Traffic Inspectorate, “were flooded with water.”
The Federal Information System of the State Traffic Inspectorate (FIS GIBDD-M) began to be created in 2013 by order of the institution subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs “Scientific and Production Association” Special Equipment and Communications “(NPO STIS). On May 20, 2020 NPO STIS signed a contract for the modernization and development of the service functionality with Rosby Inform Co LLC for RUB 59.3 million. Employees of Rosby Inform Co and NPO STIS were unavailable on office phones on Sunday.
FIS GIBDD-M is one of the modules of the unified system of information and analytical support for the activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, one of the contractors of NPO STIS told Vedomosti. According to him, the failure could affect not only the FIS GIBDD-M, but also other IT systems of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Last week, an employee of the Moscow Region traffic police department told the Vedomosti correspondent about the problems that had arisen in his work after installing the new software. Some of the information specified in the vehicle registration certificates (STS) was not displayed in the new software, he said. Earlier it was reported that in September the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia and the Ministry of Digital Science began testing a digital copy of the STS.
On the part of the Ministry of Digital Science, there are no problems with the portal of state services, Maksut Shadayev, Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media, told Vedomosti: “The portal of state services works without interruptions. But the provision of state services to the traffic police on the portal of state services is temporarily limited. “
FIS GIBDD-M is a critically important IT system with which people interact on a daily basis in real time, says Ivan Begtin, director of ANO Infoculture: “Downtime in it quite strongly affects the implementation of transactions of citizens”. As a result of the failure to provide appropriate services to citizens, economic damage occurs, says Begtin. In turn, the Ministry of Internal Affairs needs to conduct an investigation and find out why the geographical redundancy of this system and the rapid restoration of its operability after an accident were not ensured, the expert points out. The Ministry of Internal Affairs presumably used a data processing center (DPC) in Moscow or the region, belonging to the Electronic Moscow project, or some kind of internal DPC for the operation of the IT system, Begtin admits. But such projects should be placed in data centers that provide the proper level of engineering infrastructure.
«[Подобные аварии в ЦОДах происходят] not often, because a well-built data center is made according to the standard. One of these standards is mandatory: location in places protected from flooding, ”said Dmitry Fokin, former managing director of IXcellerate.
The current failure in the IT systems of the traffic police is far from the first in recent years, draws attention to the vice-president of the National Automobile Union Anton Shaparin. “There is a suspicion that the problems in the traffic police may be more serious than they seem at first glance, and the traffic police are not the most competent IT specialists,” Shaparin believes. “In general, such sensitive systems should not be used by the back offices of ministries and departments, but by a specialized contractor.” It would be logical to give all information systems under a single management, and this should be the management of the Ministry of Digital Industry, Shaparin suggested.
Vedomosti sent a request to Electronic Moscow and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. By the time the number was submitted, no responses had been received.
At 19.35 Moscow time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that access to departmental information resources had been fully resumed. In order to “achieve regular operation of the servers, the technical specialists of the Ministry of Internal Affairs carried out recovery measures around the clock for a day and a half,” the ministry said in a statement.
“We have now received a notification of the operability – we are turning it on on the (State Services) portal,” Maksut Shadayev told Vedomosti at 22:17 Moscow time.
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