The Ministry of Digital Development wants to centralize city video surveillance systems through the national project “Data Economy”

The Ministry of Digital Development proposes to include in the national project “Data Economy” an initiative that involves the creation of a national platform for storing and processing information from all urban video surveillance systems in the Russian Federation. The ministry estimates the cost of developing the platform at 12 billion rubles. However, market participants who have experience in organizing such systems believe that the costs of complete consolidation will be five to six times higher and it will be more cost-effective to develop centralized video surveillance on site.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the presentation of the head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksut Shadayev, presented on November 21 at the strategic session on the national project “Data Economy”. The document contains proposals for the structure of the future national project, their implementation is estimated at 1.51 trillion rubles. until 2030. One of the initiatives involves the centralization of video surveillance systems operating in the Russian Federation.

Judging by the materials, there are now 1.2 million video surveillance cameras operating in Russian cities. Only half of the cameras installed at state expense are connected to centralized systems in the regions. Regional authorities do not have access to private cameras. The Ministry of Digital Development considers it necessary to create a national “platform for processing and storing data from CCTV cameras” that can connect to regional systems. The project also involves the mandatory connection of access cameras to the platform, the installation costs of which can be included in the budget for the overhaul of apartment buildings.

The video stream will be analyzed using face and image recognition mechanisms. The ministry estimates the cost of developing the platform at 12 billion rubles. The Ministry of Digital Development expects that in 2030 the number of CCTV cameras in the country will grow to 5 million and all of them will be connected to AI systems capable of processing the video stream. This, according to officials, will, among other things, increase the detection of crimes by 30%. The ministry clarified to Kommersant that “certain categories of owners” will be required to install and connect video cameras at their own expense.

A similar initiative was developed by the Ministry of Emergency Situations back in 2020–2022 as part of the AIC “Safe City” project. It was supposed to oblige all regions to deploy intelligent city security systems (now they do this at will). Regions had to switch to uniform standards for collecting and processing data (video stream, information from industrial and fire sensors, etc.), but store them locally.

In October 2021, the Ministry of Emergency Situations prepared a bill on the operation of the system, but it was criticized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Economy (see “Kommersant” dated February 7, 2022). Kommersant’s interlocutor, familiar with the situation, says that “the initiative is on pause.” Kommersant sent a request to the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

Ilya Mukha, digitalization manager for the “Transformation Strategy” practice at Reksoft Consulting, calls the task set by the ministry ambitious: “It requires not only serious equipment for storing, processing and streaming video analysis using artificial intelligence, but also communication channels, redundancy, and a large highly qualified team “

At the same time, Kommersant’s source, familiar with the organization of video surveillance systems in Moscow and the regions, believes that data centralization has no practical meaning: “Data about incidents in the regions is needed by services in the regions, there is no reason to transfer them to the national platform, this very expensive, has little functionality for all consumers of video information and will not be used by local services.”

Kommersant’s interlocutor cites the example of the use of video surveillance and facial recognition systems operating in Moscow. There are currently 276.6 thousand cameras in the capital connected to a facial recognition system. They are installed in courtyards, public places, entrances, etc. The system operator is the capital’s information technology department; security forces have access to databases through their own gateways, for example PARSIV (see “Kommersant” dated October 13, 2021).

An interlocutor in a large IT company clarifies that streaming video from video surveillance systems in the regions to a centralized national database will require “five or six times more costs than the Ministry of Digital Development” due to the need to purchase and maintain a large fleet of computing power that will be required for processing of data sets. According to him, from a cost perspective, a decentralized organization of smart surveillance systems will be more effective.

Nikita Korolev