IT-comats – Newspaper Kommersant No. 220 (7421) dated 11/26/2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the Ministry of Digital Development to create a centralized database by April 1, 2024, which will contain information about all Russians liable for military service. The Ministry of Digital Transformation will have to create an IT system that will include sets of all kinds of data about the life of citizens liable for military service: from their level of education and place of residence to current mobile phone numbers, email addresses and information about the available transport. Experts interviewed by Kommersant call the forthcoming amount of work colossal and say that the synchronization of departmental databases will cost billions of rubles.

On November 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decree “On the state information resource containing information about citizens necessary for updating military registration documents”, the document is published on the portal of legal information. The President instructed the Ministry of Digital Development to “ensure the formation” of a system by April 1, 2024, which will contain information about both Russians who are registered with the military and those who are required to register, but did not do so.

An exception was made only for officers of the SVR and the FSB – their data will not be included in the new system.

Judging by the appendix to the document, large data arrays of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Tax Service, the Russian Guard, the Pension Fund, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Education, the Central Election Commission (CEC) and other departments that collect information about Russians will be integrated into the new information system. For example, the Ministry of Internal Affairs will provide data on criminal records and places of registration of citizens, the Ministry of Health will provide data on the state of health and dependencies of those liable for military service, the Federal Tax Service will transfer data on real estate of citizens and the transport they own to the information resource, data on sports categories will be transferred from the systems of the Ministry of Sports to it, from databases CEC – about citizens who have the status of deputies or candidates for deputies, etc.

The transfer of up-to-date information about the life of Russians, as follows from the document, will also be ensured using the databases of the Ministry of Digital Transformation: we are talking about mobile phone numbers, as well as e-mail addresses that citizens have attached to their accounts on Public Services through the Unified Identification and Authentication System ( ESIA).

The coordinator of the new information system, follows from the document, will be the Ministry of Defense.

The decree entered into force on the day of its signing.

After the start of partial mobilization in Russia on September 21, 2022, the media and human rights organizations reported numerous mistakes that the military commissariats made when sending out subpoenas and instructions. For example, summons were received by wheelchair users, IT specialists who received a deferment, unfit for health reasons, fathers of many children, etc. The formal approach of military registration and enlistment offices to the procedure was criticized by officials. So, for example, Valery Fadeev, Chairman of the Council for Human Rights under the President of the Russian Federation (HRC), on September 24 in his open letter to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu pointed outthat “military commissariats often proceed from the logic of the “stick system””.

Great purely technical difficulties will stand in the way of creating a new information system, according to Kommersant’s sources in the IT industry.

An interlocutor of Kommersant in a large Russian IT company believes that the harmonization of these departments will become a problem: “Combining information of different formats from disparate sources is a monstrous job for the performer.” In order to synchronize data from various databases, you need to write converters for the IT systems of each ministry and department that will transfer information to the new system, this is necessary to bring disparate data to a single format and add to them the attributes needed by military registration and enlistment offices, for example, military registration specialty, place of military service, etc., says the interlocutor of Kommersant, who is engaged in the digitalization of one of the law enforcement agencies. “This is a simple and understandable job, but it is extremely costly, I think that it will cost far more than 1 billion rubles,” the source is sure.

It also follows from the decree of the President of the Russian Federation that the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Digital Development and the heads of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation will have until December 30, 2022 to “ensure the conversion” of data on persons liable for military service, which are already contained in the military registration documents of military commissariats, into electronic digital form.

Now in the military registration and enlistment offices, the personal files of those liable for military service are stored exclusively in paper form, and each military registration and enlistment office forms databases of citizens to be mobilized independently without any centralization, says the interlocutor of Kommersant, who is engaged in the digitalization of one of the law enforcement agencies.

Taking into account the fact that, according to the official statements of the Ministry of Defense, the mobilization resource of Russia is 25 million people and their data will need to be digitized in a month, “the work ahead is simply colossal,” says Kommersant, a top manager of a Russian IT company engaged in developments in the field of artificial intellect.

“Modern OCR (optical character recognition, optical character recognition systems) can digitize old and partially damaged documents, this is no longer a problem. But if the document has lost most of the characters, then the data from it will have to be entered into the new system manually,” he gives an example of possible problems. Vladimir Arlazarov, CEO of Smart Engines (provides document digitization solutions), points out: “We need to quickly find thousands of scanners, train people to use them, and teach machines to recognize data that should be entered into electronic systems. However, this is a large-scale task, but it can be solved.”

“The Ministry of Digital Development will form showcases of these departments in the system of interdepartmental electronic interaction, thanks to which the Ministry of Defense will update the necessary information. This will help to avoid inaccuracies in the work of military registration and enlistment offices in the framework of spring and autumn calls for military service, ”the ministry told Kommersant.

The Ministry of Defense did not respond to Kommersant’s request.

Nikita Korolev