Assessing the Maturity Level of Saint Petersburg’s Digital Government
Corresponding email: rytova_ev@spbstu.ru
Published at : 07 Dec 2020
Volume : IJtech
Vol 11, No 6 (2020)
DOI : https://doi.org/10.14716/ijtech.v11i6.4440
Rytova, E., Verevka, T., Gutman, S., Kuznetsov, S., 2020. Assessing the Maturity Level of the Digital Government of Saint Petersburg. International Journal of Technology. Volume 11(6), pp. 1081-1090
| Elena Rytova | Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Russia, 195251, St. Petersburg, Polytechnicheskaya, 29 |
| Tatiana Verevka | Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Russia, 195251, St. Petersburg, Polytechnicheskaya, 29 |
| Svetlana Gutman | Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Russia, 195251, St. Petersburg, Polytechnicheskaya, 29 |
| Sergey Kuznetsov | Institute for Regional Economic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia, 190013, St. Petersburg, Serpuhovskaya, 38 |
This
paper assesses the readiness of Russia’s government authorities and local
governments for a digital transformation. The digital economy’s condition in
the public sector is analyzed, and the problems and possibilities of developing
a digital economy in this area are identified. Based on an analysis of the current
methods for assessing countries’ readiness for a digital economy and
international models to evaluate the development of an e-government, a
methodological approach is developed to enable the assessment of a “digital
government’s” maturity level at various governmental levels. St. Petersburg was
selected as the object of this paper’s research. Expert procedures, methods for
gathering and processing statistical information, and fuzzy logic served as the
methodological basis for this paper’s calculations. The maturity level of the
city’s digital economy was identified using a fuzzy-set approach. The results
of these calculations show that, despite numerous solutions aimed at developing
digitalization in the public sectors of Russia and, in particular, St.
Petersburg, the maturity level of the city’s digital government remains
insufficient to satisfy society and businesses’ modern demands. Based on the
conducted research, this paper highlights the reasons for the low maturity
level of St. Petersburg’s digital government and develops recommendations on
how to increase this maturity level.
Digital economics; Digital government; Fuzzy logic; Smart government; St. Petersburg
Over the past 20 years, Russia has actively become
involved in digitally transforming its economy and public administration.
During the first stage of these reforms, from 2003 to 2013, the “Electronic
Russia 2002–2010” program was created and carried out. Throughout its run, the
program emphasized the issue’s technical and infrastructural sides since, at
that time, technological factors held back the development of an e-government.
As a result of completing this program, the transformation’s technological
effect was largely achieved—unlike its social-economic effect, which proved
insufficient despite significant financing from the government. The program’s results
were impressive since it was able to create a base infrastructure for an e-government.
A key step forward was the creation of the Single Public and Municipal Services
Portal, gosuslugi.ru.
The Single Public Services Portal (SPSP) has been a front office for
Russia’s digital government since its creation in 2009, providing users with
information, forms and applications, and payment services. It has undergone several
changes and modernizations, adding new technologies and functionality as well
as adapting to the new principle of
In 2010, during the development of previous
initiatives, the government decree “On the Government Program of Russia
‘Information Society (2011–2020)’” (later extended to 2019–2024) was adopted. This program aimed
to further develop one-click access to government services through the SPSP, as
well as multi-functional service centers, at creating an interagency system for
electronic communication and a system for managing documents, and at providing public
access to information about government bodies’ activities. The government’s constant
focus on digital transformation at the highest levels of power allowed Russia
to quickly rise in international ratings of e-governments and to achieve
remarkable success. The number of users of online public and municipal services
doubled in just one year, reaching 40 million in 2016 and 70 million by 2018.
Expert evaluations have pointed to the Russian public’s growing confidence in a
digital government, digital participation, a sharing economy, and the use of
payment cards.
In 2014–2019, the program underwent constant changes
after a series of presidential decrees were passed (for example, ? 601 from
2012, “On the Main Areas for Improving Public Administration”) as well as
“Strategies for Developing an Information Society (2017–2030).” Other
noticeable changes occurred in the related goals and expected results: for
example, the goal of reducing the digital disparity between regions disappeared
and reappeared several times, and it is missing from the latest version of the
document. The current version of the program was adopted in 2019, and it includes
several subprograms, such as Subprogram 4—“Information Government” (Ivanova, 2020).
In
2018, the “Digital Economy in Russia” national program (national project) was
adopted in parallel with the “Information Society” government program. In
total, 1.6349 trillion rubles are planned to be spent to implement the project.
One of the national project’s goals is to create a stable and safe information
and telecommunications infrastructure for the high-speed transfer, processing,
and storage of large amounts of data. The program includes six federal
projects, such as “Digital Public Administration” (active from November 11, 2018,
to December 31, 2024).
Nevertheless, in practice, the introduction of digital
governments in Russia and throughout the world has accompanied several significant
problems and limitations. More often than not, these concerns relate to
existing government services’ failure to seek a fundamental restructuring in
order to provide citizens and businesses with higher-quality public services.
On the contrary, the mere digitization of individual operations and documents has
taken place while preserving existing interdepartmental processes and
interactions. This approach has often led to the development of complex and
unusable digital platforms and low satisfaction among users. For this reason, departments
have experienced an insufficient penetration of digital transformations and a lack
of modern channels of communication among departments. Various incompatible
departmental platforms have been created, which have likewise led to more
difficulty in providing public services to citizens and businesses. Finally,
the divide between efficient, digital, and interactive external government
platforms and traditional, mostly manual, internal processes has persisted,
which does not allow for increased efficiency. The next significant problem is a
lack of communication between the various levels of government (federal,
regional, and municipal), which causes imbalances in the use of digital
technologies, depending on places’ levels of government. Many local government
organizations do not meet national requirements for digitalization. Another
significant problem is qualified staff, as well as their training and
retraining in new digital realities. At the same time, this problem concerns both
management personnel and executors. This problem is essential and complex,
relating to regions’ quality of human capital (Kuladzhi et al., 2017; Skotarenko et al., 2019).
A digital government is based on previous e-government reforms. It aims to
improve government services using the new opportunities provided by digital
technology—enabling a government to better serve its citizens and creating a
favorable environment for business and industry competition.
Russia has reached some impressive achievements in creating a reliable
national broadband infrastructure, providing—among other achievements—a widespread
penetration of mobile communication. Several initial steps have also been made
in establishing the interdepartmental cooperation necessary for providing
digital services through a single national portal.
In terms of transitioning to the next digital transformation stage, Russia’s
main achievement has been its development of a modernized digital
infrastructure that is capable of supporting the “government as a platform” approach.
The transition to data-driven administration and the innovative use of
new digital technologies—such as data analytics and the blockchain (Babkin et al., 2018),
artificial intelligence, and the Internet-of-Things—has sped up the transition
to a new level of digital government in Russia. This transition can particularly
create the basis for future technological breakthroughs (Berawi, 2019a; Berawi, 2019b).
Achieving a leading position in digital government
entails a complete internal digital transformation of the public sector, as
well as providing individual services to citizens and businesses via several
trustworthy, transparent, and efficient channels. To accomplish these goals, a
significant transformation of Russia’s existing e-government architecture is required.
This architectural transformation must include the reengineering of administrative
processes and an emphasis on using national databases, the joint use of digital
services among government bodies, and the provision of active services on the
digital government platform to allow direct interaction with citizens and
businesses. Only by rearranging the digitalization processes in all areas
discussed above can the government transition to the fifth maturity level—“smart
government”.
This research work was supported by the Academic Excellence Project
5-100 proposed by Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University.
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