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Officials hampering electronic service program should be reprimanded, Putin said

He also noted the problem of the protection of personal data
Photo ITAR-TASS
Photo ITAR-TASS

NOVO-OGAREVO, September 4 (Itar-Tass) — Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the Ministry of Telecommunications and Mass Communications not to loosen attention to the implementation of the program of electronic services to people, including at its second stage in Russian regions. Meanwhile, he called to establish the feedback and bring to responsibility the officials, who hamper this work.

“Pay the proper attention to this issue, this work should be finalized,” he said at a meeting with Minister of Communications and Mass Media Nikolai Nikiforov.

“The information should be received timely over the current situation in the country on this issue, monitor and analyse it,” the president said. “After this I ask you to make a relevant proposal, if something should be amended in the effective law, so that he will work efficiently. We are keeping this issue under control,” he stated.

Putin recalled that the regions should be engaged in the work to the enforcement of the law on electronic services for people since July 1. Nikiforov acknowledged that “the work began quite unstably.” “According to the statistical reports, we will witness leading regions today, in which a large amount of information requests are made in the electronic way, and the regions, where this work just began,” the minister of communications and mass media said.

Nikiforov noted that after the summer recession of business activities “this work should be put on full scale in September.” For its part, the ministry provided for “the full readiness of the regions at federal level, because the information exchange is multilevel.” “Today we are following closely the statistics,” the minister stated.

“It is important that the law in any case sides with local residents, and those regions and those officials, who are not ready to do this work in technical terms today, just should file these paper certificates themselves. State-run structures rather than local residents are seeking for these documents,” Nikiforov noted. Meanwhile, administrative fines in several dozens of thousands of roubles are envisaged for each illegal request for the certificate from the local resident. “So, if an official demanded a certificate dozens of times within a day, respectively, a quite high administrative fine is levied,” he said.

Putin asked whether all this happens this way. “We have created a special website in the Internet, on which residents note concrete facts, when some certificate was demanded from them illegally, work out attentively this fact with our colleagues in the regions, particularly with federal structures,” the minister pledged to him. “So, there is some feedback, the situation is getting better, but much more is to be done,” he acknowledged. In particular, he named as one of the problems “digital inequality” that is the lack of access to the Internet for many people in the country.

Putin also noted the problem of the protection of personal data. The minister acknowledged that “despite the fact that the legislation in this sphere was enacted, no serious penal sanctions are envisaged for the personal data operators, the efficient mechanism of bringing them to administrative responsibility today.” According to him, the scope of regulatory acts was drafted that will make it possible to vest the Russian communications watchdog with additional powers for bringing to justice. Meanwhile, Nikiforov emphasized that “this procedure should be toughened as much as possible in order to show to all operators, who process personal data (this is about 300,000 various legal entities) that the information in our country, particularly personal data of people is high responsibility, particularly financial responsibility.”