The government is preparing a new procedure for subsidizing state information systems

The government may approve a new procedure for allocating budget funds for the development and creation of government information systems (GIS) by state corporations. In particular, it will be prohibited to allocate subsidies for writing technical specifications, and the entire procedure for allocating funds will be approved by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Digital Development, and then the government commission on budget design. The IT industry believes that the changes will help state-owned companies switch to Russian software through subsidies.

A draft government resolution changing the procedure for subsidizing GIS was developed by the Ministry of Finance and published on the portal of legal acts for public discussion. The document establishes the rules for providing subsidies to state corporations, state-owned companies and public law companies (PPC). The Ministry of Finance intends, with the support of the Ministry of Digital Development, to streamline relations with infrastructure state corporations and state-owned companies, to which the government transfers powers to create sectoral state information systems, follows from the document.

Amendments to Art. 78.3 of the Budget Code, requiring separate accounting and procedures for allocating subsidies for the creation and maintenance of GIS by state-owned companies, were introduced only in 2022. Prior to this, state powers transferred to the State Corporation, PPK and similar structures were financed under individual agreements with the budget for each company.

From the draft of the new document it follows that the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Digital Development will have to, after agreeing on the GIS project, enter data about it into the state information coordination system (FSIS KI). Subsidizing the development of technical specifications for the planned GIS will be prohibited: funds can only be used to refine an existing system or create a new one. The project of work is sent for approval to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Digital Development no later than two months before the start of its consideration by the government commission on budget design, it follows from the text. After approval by the government commission, the initiator will have to submit the project to the government within ten days.

The goal of the new project is to formalize the rules for interaction between government bodies and state corporations, determine the source of financial support for such powers in IT and take into account IT decisions in budget planning, the Ministry of Finance told Kommersant. “The rules are also aimed at distinguishing between project and process activities in the public sector,” the ministry clarified. The Ministry of Digital Development did not respond to the request.

The Ministry of Finance needs new subsidizing rules to ensure that the GIS created in this way is adequate to the assigned tasks, since their data is used by the ministry, among other things, for budget planning and government informatization. In part, this is also a reflection of the restructuring of public administration in recent years, when ministries created economic entities in their areas of jurisdiction (PPK REO at the Ministry of Natural Resources, PPK Roskadastr at Rosreestr, etc.). De facto, the Ministry of Finance sets out in the document the rules by which they will be assigned tasks and allocated money.

Subsidies will be allocated on the basis of an agreement concluded in a form approved by the Ministry of Finance between a state company, state corporation or PPK and the recipient of budget funds, which will be responsible for the development of GIS, according to an interlocutor in one of the state companies. “The recipient of funds from the budget can be directly a state corporation; such cases are possible, for example, for Rosatom and other corporations that can independently be managers of budget funds,” admits Kommersant’s source. Russian Railways, Rosatom, Gazprom and Transneft did not answer Kommersant.

Technical Director of Tsifra Group of Companies Pavel Grinevich believes that the new rules will give the customer the opportunity to reduce the cost of the final solution. The initiative may encourage state-owned companies to switch to domestic software, admits Ildar Zakiev, head of the infrastructure department at LANIT-Integration. The fact is that the government’s decrees and resolutions clearly establish the deadline for the transition to Russian solutions, “but state-owned companies do not always have available funds for such large-scale projects,” he says.

Tatiana Isakova, Oleg Sapozhkov, Natalya Skorlygina