Software on order – Newspaper Kommersant No. 162 (7363) of 09/05/2022

Simplification of the procedure for applying for grants up to RUB 500 million. on the development and implementation of domestic software has led to the emergence of a considerable number of poorly prepared projects and the need for additional expertise for their consideration. Although the RFRIT competition for developers started at the end of April, not a single meeting of the grant committee has yet taken place. The Ministry of Digital Development promises that they will begin in mid-October and by the end of the month decisions on grants will be made. Now, experts recommended by industrial competence centers, de facto software customers, are involved in project evaluation. Without the latter, it is extremely risky to finance developments, the Ministry of Digital Development admits.

At the beginning of the year, it was planned that 7.5 billion rubles would be allocated for IT industry grants in 2022. In April, after the expansion of sanctions and the outflow of IT personnel abroad, the government added another 14 billion rubles for these purposes. Grants should be distributed by the Bortnik Foundation, the Skolkovo Foundation and the Russian Foundation for the Development of Information Technologies (RFRIT). Together with the allocation of additional funds, the ceiling for co-financing projects by the state was raised from 50% to 80%, and the amount of grants increased (for more details, see Kommersant of March 28).

The bulk of the additional subsidies (10.8 billion rubles) went to RFRIT, which accepts applications for funds through the public services portal. The amount of the grant from this fund for the development and launch of domestic digital solutions on the market is from 20 million to 500 million rubles, for individual large projects – up to 6 billion rubles. for up to three years. Acceptance of applications for participation in the competition started on April 27, but so far not a single meeting of the grant committee has taken place, which caused questions from some market participants. In July, RFRIT reported that it had already received more than 750 applications to support the development of domestic software within the framework of the competition.

As explained on Friday during an online meeting dedicated to supporting Russian IT projects, Deputy Minister of Digital Development Maxim Parshin, all decisions on grants are planned to be made before the end of October. He explained the relative duration of consideration by the complexity of the procedure for expert evaluation of projects. In August, experts recommended by industrial competence centers (ICCs, unite representatives of industries in which it is necessary to replace foreign software) joined the analysis of applications. “Using the expert infrastructure created as part of the track on the ICC and the CCR (development competence centers, they include software developers. – Kommersant), we have formed a pool of experts – there are several hundred of them, they are now receiving the status of official fund experts and signing an agreement on confidentiality,” the Deputy Minister said. According to him, these experts “de facto verify the submitted applications for development from the point of view of the customer” – after all, without a clearly defined order, it is risky for the state to finance project development.

Maxim Parshin acknowledged that the strengthening of the role of peer review is also connected with the simplification of the application procedure – many of them turned out to be unfinished. “People decided to take a risk – all of a sudden they manage to apply for 500 million rubles, quickly get money from the grant committee, and then, maybe with luck, something will be done,” the deputy minister complained.

According to him, by October 1, all submitted applications will be evaluated by at least three experts from the ICC, this assessment will be used in the overall evaluation of the project. Based on the results of the decisions made at the presidium of the government commission on digital development (tentatively held on October 10), grant committees will be held (starting from mid-October), at which grant recipients will be determined both for systemically important projects for the ICC and for development.

Thus, the selection is synchronized with the work of the ICC and CCC (development of large projects for specific industry customers). At the same time, the mechanism for justifying the need to obtain a grant to develop a product for a specific customer caused concern among a number of experts. With this approach, the software may turn out to be specialized for a specific enterprise, which will limit its applicability (for more details, see Kommersant of August 30).

Venera Petrova