Vedomosti, 31 may 2002

On Monday, the Russian Economy Ministry is starting submitting applications for contracts within the Electronic Russia program for 2002. Among the tender projects is the creation of an economic gateway by September, which is to be a prototype for the general gateway of the Russian government. Though, the latter is to be created not before 2005.

The total budget of the current tender of the Economy Ministry amounts to RUR37.6m (about $1.20m). It deals with the implementation of the principles of 'the electronic government', which are very popular in the world. It means the interaction of the government with the citizens and businesses by means of the Internet. For example, it was planned to create the first stage of the system of electronic trade for purchasing products for federal state needs.

'The governmental gateway' will receive RUR8m (about $255,480.05) from the total budget of the program. The idea is to take the existing site of the Economy Ministry (www.economy.gov.ru) as a basis and to add the sites of the Anti-Monopoly Ministry, the Labor Ministry, the Finance Ministry and the Center for Strategic Research. The created gateway will have the address www.economika.ru.

However, the current owner of this address is RosBusinessConsulting (RBC) . Head of the Internet task force of the Economy Ministry Mikhail Dvorkovich reported to the Vedomosti newspaper that a preliminary agreement was reached with RBC regarding passing this address to the Ministry. RBC General Director Yury Rovensky confirmed to Vedomosti his readiness "to pass the gateway to the Economic Ministry", but he pointed out that no official negotiations had been held with representatives of the Ministry regarding this matter.

The economic gateway is expected to be a pilot project for the creation of a general governmental gateway, which will include the sites of all the federal ministries and other institutions. The governmental site can hardly be called a gateway so far. It includes only links to the sites of some ministries and institutions and documents published by the government. A gateway structure suggests a unified search and a unified database designed for a user to be able to get all the necessary information in one window.

However, a unified governmental gateway will not be created before 2005. "It is not easy to create an efficient infrastructure of the electronic government on the regional and the federal level. These projects concern a long-term system of public administration", Deputy Head of the government Information Department Andrey Koshkin says. At the same time, Internet project specialists point out that the three-year term is too long for creating the governmental gateway. "The term is so long that there is a threat to create something, which just will not work due to rapidly outdating technology", Rovensky says.

As for now, users will have to use the updates of the existing governmental site. As Koshkin said, this summer the www.pravitelstvo.gov.ru site will be updated considerably and brought in accordance with the new requirements. Koshkin pointed out that the interface of the new site would differ from the current version and be more interactive.

Alexander Boreiko