More expensive, worse or all at once – Newspaper Kommersant No. 230 (7431) dated 12/12/2022

Attempts to replace the losses caused by the isolation of the Russian Federation from the global trade system due to the military operation in Ukraine with Russian developments or to circumvent the deficits through IT solutions are now a significant part of the document flow of departments. Only in recent weeks we have come across government amendments to the law on information technology – on the transition to electronic mailing of legally significant notices (sanctions, shortage of printing devices and materials for them), the bill of the Federal Tax Service on transferring tax notices to online mailings (spending on the same printers, paint and mailing about 3 billion rubles per year) and proposals from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to launch the production of printers for printing passports (imports are running out of time).

It would seem that the Ministry of Internal Affairs would also be logical to switch to digital passports – their implementation has been discussed for years. However, the department insists on the purchase of printers and is even ready to advance their production, subject to quality guarantees: the fact is that an “electronic passport” is a smart card, and microelectronics is one of the most problematic sectors of import substitution. The Federal Tax Service and other government agencies, in turn, could continue to print their notifications on paper on Russian printers, the production of which the Ministry of Internal Affairs is seeking, but they do not. It is easy to guess the reason: back in peacetime, one of the officials of the Ministry of Industry and Trade proudly showed us “the first completely domestic office printer.” A quick search then showed that there was no product on the market, it was produced “on order”, and for half the price of a modest but new Russian car. However, the digitalization of notifications costs nothing only at first glance: in addition to it, the bill proposed the State Duma to agree to “create an information system of a national certification center, which should provide sites in the Russian segment of the Internet information and telecommunications network with special security certificates for their trusted use by users ”- this “cash on delivery” is caused by the early revocation of foreign certificates.

As a result, government agencies are balancing between the deficits of various resources, building the cheapest plans for the development of public administration, depending on market opportunities, while the industry’s requests for state support for various import substitutions, meanwhile, have grown to a quarter of the annual government spending of the Russian Federation. This is also a search for market equilibrium. The results of import substitution will be more expensive or worse than what is already on the world market, otherwise the Russian Federation would export these results – the only question is what the seller and the buyer will agree on.

However, everything is not so hopeless: tax notices in electronic form will become cheaper and definitely no worse than they were.