It's kind of complicated, really. On one hand, it's understandable - in the end it's supposed to grant citizens capabilities to solve all their issues from the comfort of their homes - pay fines, get a passport, change personal data, pay taxes, book an audience with a government official - if you can interact in some way with the governmental machine, the state service web portal should be able to do that - hence its complexity. On the other hand, some simplicity would be welcome - after all, the "digital divide" is not a made-up concept. There are stories told by children how they tried to teach their parents and grandparents to use the computer - they're as funny as they're embarrassing. And it's not just problematic for those not used to clicking through a myriad of links to find a service they're looking for. It's all full of red tape.
In order to be granted access to the coveted state e-service website, you have to go through the understandable registration procedure as well as proving that you really are who you claim to be. And your passport, social security or pension id numbers just don't cut it here. You need to wait for several days, or even weeks after registering online. See, the super secret code is sent to users through traditional snail mail for security purposes. Sure, the motivation sounds reasonable, I guess, but it's just so inconvenient. It's not just the registration process. As I've said, due to the immense amount of information and services offered from first glace the design may seem cluttered. From a second glance it still may seem unnecessarily cluttered. And inconvenient.
Just take one recent example - a new service was added for citizens of the Russian capital to enjoy - whoop-dee-doo! So around February the Moscow state services web portal started offering a new feature- e-appointments for municipal clinics. As soon as the service was rolled out, several other, non-related websites also claiming to allow citizens to set a doctor's appointment from the comfort of their homes started appearing online. To make things worse, unlike the state services portal and Moscow website, which were of a broader scope, these websites were specialized, for e-appointments only. Moreover, people behind them were interested in attracting users, so they spent so time and effort into Search Engine Optimization. For those of you not familiar with the term, Search Engine Optimization or, SEO, is a complex of procedures aimed at driving a particular website to the top spot of search results for users from specific regions using specific keywords. In this case, a Muscovite typing "e-appointment" or "doctor visit online" and similar phrases to Google or Yandex would get the unofficial pages at the top of the list.
According to the chairman of the IT department of the Moscow administration Elena Novikova, the city hall has received dozens of complaints on such websites, which are understandably often confused with the real deal. Patients log in, enter their personal data, but rarely get a ticket - the fake website usually displays a page that says "there is no connection to the clinic of choice." The flaw of one of the major copycats, Мосрегистратура.рф, seems to be the fact that it simply malfunctions and gives appearance of the government-backed project. It appears that, in fact, it does work, but only with a few select clinics for now - more on that later. On the other hand, there are obviously criminal websites that demand money for the aforementioned services, which is illegal. According to Novikova, up to 40 clinics of the total 350 currently work with third-party e-appointment services - not a lot, but still more than zero. The official system works with 100 with plans to expand to every clinic as soon as possible to eliminate these questionable unofficial services.
There is a mixed opinion on the legal status of these third-party websites. Opponents claim the sole fact of an appointment in hands of a 3rd party violates patient confidentiality; personal data entered by patients may be used for criminal purposes or for targeted advertisement. Others suggest competition is good and that if confidentiality agreements are signed, patients are at no risk. Regardless, currently the city hall is working on e-appointment legislation, limiting those eligible to provide the service only to the official state services web portal. And, frankly, if the official services were easy to use and not as complicated as they currently are, there would be no need for such measures. By the way, it appears this year will be the year when the Russian government deals with the cyberspace legislation - and not just to eliminate competition for e-appointments. The first harbinger of the new legislation regarding the cyberspace is already here - the new Civil Code.
The amendments to the civil code were long overdue, this is recognized by everyone. Most importantly, the objective of the package of over 500 pages is to make Russia more corporate-friendly and attract domestic and foreign investors who often cite underdeveloped legal system as the reason for their reluctance to operate in Russia. Among various changes that are really not part of th scope of this program, the Civil Code will also impose new regulations on the world wide web. It finally addresses the situation surrounding intellectual property rights regulations online, and some already dubbed it the harsh Russian “DMCA”, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a United States copyright law implemented in 1998. According to the new Civil Code, “informational intermediaries which facilitate transfer of data over the internet or which provide third parties with capabilities to host media online, are liable for intellectual property rights infringement on equal bases should such an infringement be established”. So, in plain English, what’s going to happen? Well, the intermediaries are services and companies responsible for internet traffic, i.e. internet service providers. Thus the legislation paves the way to legally clamp down on providers and force them to ban “illegal traffic”. This is already happening, even before the amendments come into force. For example, law enforcements have recently clamped down on websites that allegedly encourage suicides. A few months ago a series of teenage suicides shook the nation and, fueled by media hype, social network groups or “suicide clubs” as well as topical websites were painted as the main culprits. Sure, confusing adolescence, stressful educational load and pressure, bad socioeconomic situation and bad parenting cannot possible cause this – it’s the website’s fault! But, of course, when it comes to such grave matters, you can never be too careful – if shutting down websites that potentially may seem like they’re encouraging someone to quit on life saves even one teenager, then cause justifies the means. And in this case, means included forcing massive traffic internet service providers to filter out websites and content that was found to be guilty.
The blogosphere is buzzing with expectations of this legislation paving the way to unnecessary governmental control and internet censorship. ICT social news website, Roem.Ru raised the issue and is currently have a heated discussion. A representative of Yandex, Russia’s equivalent to Google has chimed in: “We currently do not have the final version of the bill that was submitted to the State Duma. We would like to hope that some of its sections, specifically, those that deal with liability of internet service and hosting providers, took into consideration criticisms and wishes that were compiled by representatives of the internet industry and sent to the legislators in order to reflect the reality of internet-related laws and balance interests of all participants.”
Or take another example. Recently the St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office has, shall we say, offered internet service providers to block certain websites on the prosecution’s whim. Should an ISP receive a letter requesting a website to be blocked, they would have to comply – it’s all in the population’s interests, the officials claimed. Currently the list of such websites includes internet casinos, websites promoting extremism and inciting ethnic hatred, as well as drug advocacy and pedophilia. The thing is, that these websites cannot be blocked through existing judicial means as they’re located outside of Russia. So there’s that – so far, nothing really solid, but that does not stop interested parties from discussing the potential implications of this legislation. While the majority of bloggers of course cry “censorship”, there are those that point out currently Russia is viewed upon many as a pirate haven and that does not sit well with companies that expect their intellectual property rights protected. So what Russian internet currently has is not freedom, but, rather, chaos – and that has to change. And we’re all out of time here today.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Peter Lekarev
Quelle/Source: The Voice of Russia, 04.04.2012
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