Conspiracy theorists are frightened by the introduction of digital identification of students

The start of the project to post electronic information about university students on the state portal is scheduled for 2024

The Ministry of Digital Development reports that comprehensive electronic information about students will soon appear on the state portal. Digital records, student cards, and other documents confirming training will be posted there. This will allow students to freely enter a university or campus, automatically issue various tickets at a discount, and use other services.

The draft government resolution on the electronic reorganization of student life has been published on the state information portal. It says that the changes will affect undergraduate, specialist, master’s, residency and graduate students. The start of the project is scheduled for 2024. However, in order not to scare people, the document clarifies that for a certain transition period, “analog” documents, that is, good old paper documents or digital data in personal accounts of universities, will also be valid.

You can use the student section on the state portal from your phone. The project does not yet say what a single student document will look like, whether it will be a QR code or something else. Previously, when there was talk about an electronic passport on the same state portal, it was planned to supplement the bar code with an electronic signature and even biometrics – a fingerprint. But one thing is clear – the news here is not at all that “students now have electronic tickets and record books,” as many information resources reported. This has been working in universities for a long time.

“Yes, we had electronic student cards even before Covid, in 2017,” says Rodion Suidin, a teacher at a Moscow university. – And electronic record books appeared even earlier, in my opinion. I don’t even know if such a rudiment as paper media exists anywhere else. In any case, in relation to grade books and tickets. Here, as I understand it, the point is that all this information will now be on the state portal. It is not too clear whether it will remain in personal accounts at the universities themselves or whether they will be abolished so that data is not duplicated.

It’s interesting that the news about the “electronic student” stirred up the swamp of conspiracy theorists. There is renewed talk about a global digital conspiracy to fool humanity – they say, in this case, they decided to start with students.

“As I understand it, we are talking about globalizing all information and reducing identification to a single icon,” says programmer Ivan Berezin. – I don’t see anything wrong with this. Often in such cases you can hear that you can’t put all your eggs in one basket. But this is the wrong view. All the information is already on the Internet about each of us; we have all been in this basket for a long time. We are talking about a new service. Many people use fast payments and this does not bother anyone. There will be “quick documents” here. And in fact, this is not only faster, but also more convenient. Students will definitely appreciate it if the student ID is not a book or a card, but a code – it cannot be lost. I myself lost my studak twice while I was studying.

As for the danger of data loss in the event of a failure or hackers, the State Portal is reliably protected in the event of even massive attacks. As far as I remember, in June last year there was a big attack on university websites, and it was unsuccessful. The State Portal is even more secure. And it’s simply impossible to lose data from there; there are large storage facilities and multi-stage backups.