For all IT systems, the system – Newspaper Kommersant No. 162 (7363) of 09/05/2022

The Ministry of Digital Transformation has published draft regulations on the Gostekh and Gosmarket platforms. To manage state information systems, Gostekh will itself become a federal GIS aimed at the most efficient use of resources in the processes of digitalization of public administration. The mandate of the platform has been expanded due to the possibility of working with it not only by the state and municipalities, but also by state-owned companies that will interact with IT developers through a specialized marketplace – Gosmarket. However, the issue of tariffing work with the system has been left open – the principle of “payment for the actual volume of consumption” of Gostekh products is declared in the regulation, but how it will be implemented is still unknown.

The Ministry of Digital Transformation and Digital Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko have decided on the design of the Gostekh system – the draft regulation on it (and the specialized marketplace for GIS included in it – Gosmarket) was published by the department on the regulation.gov.ru portal. The document de facto sums up the pilot phase of a single platform for the development and use of GIS, launched back in 2020. The experiment was supposed to end in May 2022, but problems with the supply of heavy IT equipment in connection with the Russian military operation in Ukraine pushed back the deadlines (see Kommersant on March 29). If the document is signed, the work of state customers with Gostekh will remain voluntary until 2024, and then it will become uncontested.

It follows from the documents that the concept of the state environment for information systems (see Kommersant of October 25, 2021) was somewhat expanded and refined during the experiment. The regulation assumes that the structure of the platform will include its own FSIS “Management of the unified digital platform Gostekh”, the main purpose of which will be to ensure the life cycle of all other GIS. The perimeter of the platform, according to the project of the Ministry of Digital Development, will be expanded. Thus, the ecosystem will give access to its tools not only to federal and regional authorities, but also to municipalities, state unitary enterprises, municipal unitary enterprises, state corporations and state-owned companies, public law companies and even business entities under the control of the state or local authorities.

It should be noted that this expansion fits into the logic of the ministry – recently the FKU Gostekh, subordinate to the Ministry of Digital Development, announced the readiness of the methodology for selecting regional services and information systems for the platform, and the federal center is ready to co-finance the transfer to the regions in Gostekh (see “Kommersant” from August, 26th). Projects to ensure economies of scale are also moving in the same direction in the field of material base for state IT (expanding the use of state clouds by regions and departments to save costs on their own IT capacities, see Kommersant of August 18) and the development by the ministry of a centralized “constructor public services” to save government funds for their development (see “Kommersant” of June 24).

In addition to the consolidation of IT systems, Gostekh will have to ensure the scalability of IT solutions – this will also become one of the tasks of the platform management system. Also in its functionality – ensuring “continuous improvement of functionality when legislation changes”, protecting the confidentiality and integrity of information and ensuring a wide discussion of the requirements for digital products and platform providers by the entire pool of customers.

It is unclear in the document of the Ministry of Digital Development that consumers pay for Gostekh products – the project declares the “principle of paying for the actual volume of consumption” “at a price determined depending on the resources used in accordance with the catalog of digital products of the platform.” Earlier, responsible officials said that the procedure would be formalized as a purchase under FZ-44 from a single supplier, but this law does not apply to state-owned companies. On the questions of “Kommersant” about the principles of pricing for products and services, as well as whether it is possible to look at “Gostech” as a state monopoly, FKU “Gostekh” could not answer yesterday. “Now the development of regulatory documentation for the post-experimental period is underway,” they said.

Oleg Sapozhkov, Venera Petrova