The state from the computer: who in Russia did not like digital slavery

We are in the first part of our material versed in what has become a "digital state", which is so clearly stated over 10 years ago, and found out why care in the network of all the organs and apparatuses of the country's leadership until the end and did not happen. Now let's calculate who and how much this new reality will cost, who benefits, and for whom, on the contrary, is a threat.

"Knobkodav", salary - 15,000 per day

There is a fairly significant layer of officials who are frightened by the desire of the new prime minister to translate the state into figures as much as possible. Firstly, most of their functions may become unnecessary, and therefore, the sweet life of events and working from 9 to 18 in a cozy leather armchair may simply end. Secondly, it will be much more difficult to depict the hectic activity when your every step is displayed in electronic form and your KPI is calculated automatically based on the results of the day / month / year.

This is what the authors of the Novaya Iskrennost telegram channel note: “ Today a senator in Russia is just a rich push button, and tomorrow he is a real political subject. Like in the late 1990s. Therefore, due to the current absurdity of the political structure, it is at least reckless to drive everyone online and make not only the ideological content of these bodies, but also their functionality purely symbolic . "

But the excitement of the bureaucratic heart is one thing, while economic realities are quite another. While servicing the work of offline employees of all kinds of government bodies and apparatus costs the country a pretty penny.

Moreover, the head of the committee of the upper house of parliament on regulations, Vyacheslav Timchenko, defends such budgets and claims that without constant business trips of senators it will not be possible to defend the interests of Russia, and "people will no longer understand why laws are being passed." An interesting logic, but people rather do not understand something else - how can an amount comparable to launching a rocket into space be spent on senators' travel.

Telegram channel “ Something like this ”: “ The current nomenclature has no concept of“ cheaper ”, but there is a concept of“ more profitable ”: it is on the basis of this paradigm that the work of the authorities will be built. It will be more profitable to make it cheaper and transfer the state apparatus to digital - this will happen. And so - even in conditions of remote work, flights, accommodation in hotels, cars, support will not go anywhere - officials will always have to be on the ground, at least for the sake of demonstrating active work. "

- It will be cheaper to carry out a large-scale reduction of the state apparatus, starting with the federal authorities , says Ivan Begtin . - Number-non-number is a secondary question. Luxury items can be not only business class flights, but also hi-end technology, daily food delivery from expensive restaurants, and much more remotely.

Add me as a friend, Mr. President

Is this internal rejection of the digital transformation related specifically to the mentality of our leaders? For example, tweets from former US President Donald Trump can be regarded as official statements. In our country, even the online format looks like an ordinary offline meeting, just at a table thousands of kilometers long.

Telegram channel " Something like this ": " Comparison of the activities of our officials on the Internet with foreign ones is hardly successful: Trump is a businessman, showman, for him Twitter is a communication channel and a tool for his own popularization, he brought this into politics, and the reverse hardly possible. Putin, for obvious reasons from his past of power, does not sit on the Internet and does not have accounts on social networks. But despite the total orientation of the entire power vertical to the first person, the presence of social networks among public officials somehow became part of the KPI from the AP. However, the social network of Russian systemic politicians and officials simply will not be an instrument of influence: in such conditions, only one person with all the name and surname we know is allowed to “influence”. It's just that this person's methods of influence are more extensive than pages in social networks. "

Telegram channel New Sincerity : “ There is no public political competition in our country. And broadcasting important messages through social networks is a public policy tool. Therefore, it is not so with us. The very same Putin could well influence the economy through Twitter or destroy and raise the national currency through vcontac. But the TV is enough for him. The entire background and life experience of Putin completely blocks his opportunity to become the Russian Twitter president . "

With all this, experts agree that a rather large class of officials who use social networks as a broadcast and communication channel has matured. Starting with a specific Rogozin and ending with numerous blogger governors and instagram mayors. Or, for example, while Medvedev was President of the Russian Federation, in part, it was so, and he himself actively blogged at the beginning and almost all ministers and governors. There is a demand for this form of communication and it is obviously strong. It is enough to look at how actively, massively, emotionally and, most importantly, not always negatively, users react to the appearance of real big bosses in trends, and not press officers under their names.

Does the country need online?

On the one hand, society and the state have a lot of common interests that can be quite effectively combined within the framework of the modern online bureaucracy. The transition of most government departments of our country to work online would not only save a significant amount of working time, material resources and money, but also speed up many management processes and increase their efficiency. On the other hand, in Russian realities, spending on the digitalization of the state is growing almost faster than the cost of offices, cars, drivers and hotels.

There is one more reason because of which, perhaps, we should not wait for full digitalization in the near future. Heads of departments and authorities are replaced much faster than they manage to go through the process of introducing specialized services made on different platforms. As a result, each new local "tsar" brings not only his own team, but also wants to write down the success of entering a number to his account, so every time projects actually start anew, and it is very difficult to track spending on them. Such an IT dance, perhaps, is not typical only for the capital, however, the funding there is completely different.

- The budget of the capital's DIT (Department of Information Technologies) is comparable to the budget of some remote small region. These are billions of rubles. That is why in Moscow the Safe City, the transport structure in terms of IT , and the My Documents services, and many other things are so well done , - comments Sergey Oseledko .

But these are open questions of today. And what awaits us next? Maybe the next president in 2024 will be “virtual” at all?

- Of course, there is still much to grow, in the future, I think that we will set a course for voice assistants with artificial intelligence, so that any elderly person who has problems understanding new technologies can get the service and assistance he needs, - continues Oseledko .

Telegram channel “ Something like this ”: “ We have seen a“ semi-virtual ”president since spring: it seems that he is there, but we see him only on screens, unless Twitter and Instagram are running. And if we recall the concept of “collective Putin”, then the “semi-virtual” president has been with us for a long time - he changes his “avatars” in the form of the roles of protector, regulator, guardian, and so on; drawn from screens; spreads his words on the Web through websites and social networks; he can even ask a question for a press conference in the app. Only it does not become more accessible for citizens - at least in the virtual space ”.

- The only question is, why ? - says Ivan Begtin . - So we can count on a robot president by 2040, or it may turn out that the very notion of a president of anything will become an oxymoron incompatible with direct democracy .

But, whatever the attitude to the widespread digitalization of everything around, while in our country a student has to climb a birch tree to get a higher education, talking about a complete rejection of offline is useless. And the question here is not only in the development of the network on the territory of our great and immense. Experts agree that people themselves are not yet ready to take seriously the power that is “out there,” on the other side of the screen. Moreover, this prejudice concerns precisely the network, since for decades the central channels had the status of the only (albeit one-way) connection with the leadership.

Telegram channel " Something like this ": " Citizens generally do not perceive information on the Internet: for someone, due to their age, using the Internet is too difficult, for someone politics and the vertical of power with its life are generally not interested in - and the high political apathy here plays a decisive role. "

“Online and offline formats will still have to be combined,” says political analyst Anton Khashchenko. - Obviously, completely offline will not go anywhere. Personal contact with the public is essential. A person comes with complaints and problems to a person. We have different people, many believe that in this way the problem will "reach" faster to those who can solve it. Again, older people find it difficult to understand fast-moving technology. For some (long) time, we cannot do without offline, this must be accepted.

In any case, spending on both offline and digitalization is not yet fungible. But we have to admit that the latter has given obvious results in several years. Fights for a place in the queue at the tax office are in the distant past, and the electronic work book will not be lost, leaving you with zero experience. And it even seems that for citizens these reforms are solid honey, but only it has an aftertaste. Simply put, not all IT services are equally useful, because with an electronic profile, total surveillance, the prospect of identity theft when an account is hacked, or the ability to completely erase a person from the network came into the load. And if earlier you were "without a piece of paper - ...", but you could get that very piece of paper in your hands and keep it like the apple of your eye, now how? But this is a completely different story, which we will tell about in the following materials.