The Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast
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ADDRESS BY OKSANA KOZLOVSKAYA AT THE 45TH SESSION OF THE LEGISLATIVE DUMA OF TOMSK OBLAST
Dear Mr Zhvachkin!
Dear deputies and guests!
Almost all news reports of the current month are starting with an update on the escalating migrant crisis in the European Union. Year to date more than 350,000 migrants arrived in Europe and refugees keep flowing in fleeing the war. Politicians fail to find an aligned solution to the problem caused by acute geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa.
Apparently, neither the EU nor the global community can keep turning their backs on the migration issue any longer. Russia has suggested discussing it in the nearest OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.
Russia is summarizing the results of the national election day. Numbers speak for the scale of the election campaign 2015: 83 constituent entities and 59 million voters participated, 21 regions elected governors, 11 regions elected deputies to regional parliaments, 23 regions elected deputies to region’s capitals.
In Tomsk Oblast we elected 20 heads of districts and villages, members to 20 dumas of Oblast and city districts, and one deputy to the Tomsk Oblast Duma – Dmitry Nikulin.
Dear colleagues!
I suggest focusing today on one of the most important drivers of the region’s development – smart technologies and how they shape all aspects of life of modern humans.
The international experience in implementing national information system programs has demonstrated that IT and communications are capable of creating new opportunities for people, business, governments and territories by improving the quality of life and conditions for the development of business.
That’s exactly how this goal is formulated in the Strategy for Developing Information Society in Russia and the Socioeconomic Development Strategy of Tomsk Oblast. It plays a key role in the INOTomsk project.
Online access to digital services and various national and municipal government services has long ago become an essential part of our lives. Examples are e-tickets for planes or trains, online doctor appointments or applications to a nursery school, booking theater tickets or paying bills, shopping online, chatting on Skype, etc.
Sociologists say that 80 million Russians use the Internet at least once a month, and one Russian out of two goes online every day. Even though today most Internet users are younger than 35 years, year over year the share of aged users is growing.
Advantages are obvious – people save substantial amount of time and money on transport costs; they can get legal advice or obtain necessary information without leaving home. Today’s Russians consider mobile communication and Internet the necessaries of life and are not willing to save on them.
It is Russian law today that all government agencies – from the President and Government to the tiniest village administration office must publish online information about their work and ensure public access to this information.
Tomsk Oblast is no exception. In the last four years (2012-2015) Tomsk Oblast spent on government information society programs more than 720 million rubles (net of funds for other government agencies’ programs and expenditures of local budgets).
The results are not slow to arrive. For overall performance in information development, the so-called electronic ‘maturity’ of the territory Tomsk Oblast falls into the top ten Russian regions along with Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tatarstan and others.
Much progress has been made. Over the last two years only, in 98 localities of Tomsk Oblast municipal libraries opened 103 telecenters which provided ‘digital citizen’ training to almost 2,500 people and gave more than 50,000 consultations.
This also helped increase access to digital services for the population by 44%. The goal is to cover 70% of the population by 2018, which only becomes possible through increasing computer literacy. And budget funding alone is obviously not enough. It seems like the time has come for business to help put in place targeted computer literacy systems on co-financing terms with the regional government.
Some regions took it a step further. This summer Kazan held an all around computer literacy cup for pensioners. Not only Russian participants but also their former compatriots from EU competed. The oldest participant was 79 years old. I suggest using this best practice in our region and develop a digital literacy roadmap for the elderly.
Another aspect is that according to the Russian Central Bank the number of banking PoPs in the country has decreased by 11% (in Tomsk Oblast it went down by 13% because of the low population density). In an attempt to turn the tide the Russian Government, the Russian Post and Vneshtorgbank are launching a Post Bank project. It will double the number of banking points in the regions in three years. We should use this opportunity to save budget money and involve business in developing a digital infrastructure.
We are well prepared for that.
First of all, for the level of development of the digital infrastructure Tomsk Oblast is in the top twenty Russian regions.
Secondly, Tomsk Oblast has almost 1,000 IT firms, many of which are well known in Russia and abroad. Companies such as EleSy, Elecard, Incom, Elcomplus, Contek Soft, Elecs.Com, Tomsk Electronic Company and dozens others have vast experience in developing and implementing various life sustaining systems based on digital and intelligent systems such as traffic cameras, safety in schools, geomonitoring, etc.
Sadly, it is very hard to measure the real impact of the IT industry on the region’s GRP. However, we do know that IT is involved in 75% of the turnover of goods and services produced in the region.
It is a national goal to increase the size of the IT sector in the GDP to 6% in 2015. The share of domestic IT products in the domestic IT market should be increased to 15%. So far, we have to admit that 75% of software in the domestic market is imported from abroad.
Access to Internet is another priority. The Russian Government has set a goal to double the number of households with Internet access by 2020. This project will be launched in Tomsk Oblast in 2016 as part of the federal program Information Society.
More than 100 remote communities in 17 districts will get Internet access. Yet 220 small villages – almost 65,000 people – will not be covered by the program. We need to be able to resolve this as well.
Also, the National Platform for Open Education has been launched in Russia. This initiative is sponsored and funded by the leading universities of Russia. It is sad that Tomsk universities are not part of it. Lately, a bill on the National E-Library project was submitted to the State Duma. An e-budget is coming soon. The aim of all these digital initiatives is to provide open, free and equal remote access to information, educational and cultural resources.
To make it work properly, we need to update our legal framework, develop the public-private mechanism to embrace IT and communications, and prioritize funds in a constrained budget.
