Russia Adopts New Strategy for Development of Information Society - Jamestown 25/09/2022, 22:46 The document is extremely ambitious; yet, there are doubts about the government’s ability to meet its goals. The Strategy recently approved by the president is quite vague on expected results, as reflected by the conspicuous absence of key performance indicators (KPI)—an element that was clearly articulated in the previous document. Moreover, Russia in fact failed to fulfil the previous (2008–2015) Strategy. For instance, among other aspects, the antecedent document called for the Russian Federation to become one of the world’s top 20 countries in terms of the development of its information and cyber technology sectors. However, various international rankings, including the E-government Development Rank, the ICT Development Index, and the Networked Readiness Index, have placed Russia somewhere between 35th and 45th place. So despite allocating significant government resources to this end, that strategic goal was not achieved. Moreover, a key objective established in the previous Strategy was for the overall share of Russian IT goods and services used domestically to exceed 50 percent by 2015—this also remained unfulfilled. In fact, according to Russian sources, the domestic share of IT goods and services “satisfied internal market demand only by a quarter” (TASS (http://tass.ru/politika/3869202), December 14, 2016). Finally, the new Strategy provides no roadmap for how Russia’s IT sector is going to attract additional external investments given Western economic sanctions and the lack of crediting possibilities for Russian companies. Similarly, the new document seems to be obfuscating the actual effectiveness and efficiency of the government’s financial injections into Russian IT projects. An illustrative case is the Russian Internet search engine “Sputnik,” launched in May 2014 by stateowned Rostelecom, which became nothing more than a sound embarrassment and a financial black hole. Initially allocated an estimated $20 billion in financing (the Russian side refrained from disclosing the actual sum) it was supposed to become a competitor to Google and other known Internet search engines. However, after three years of obscurity, it has been practically shut down as an “uncompetitive project” (Meduza (https://meduza.io/news/2017/05/12/gosudarstvennomu-poiskoviku-sputnik-grozitzakrytie-na-ego-sozdanie-potratili-20-millionov-dollarov), May 12). This being said, it would be worthwhile to add yet another point of concern. It bears noting that Moscow is currently tightening its grip over the domestic Internet space (the so-called “Runet”) and mass media (see EDM (https://jamestown.org/program/russiasnew-information-security-doctrine-fencing-russia-outside-world/), December 16, 2016; see Commentaries (https://jamestown.org/russian-internet-freedom-still-threatened-despitegovernment-claims/), October 4, 2014). Therefore, one might wonder if the government’s new Strategy is nothing more than a new brick in the wall of “information isolation” of the Russian population and a subordination of the Runet to the state’s full and unconditional https://jamestown.org/program/russia-adopts-new-strategy-development-information-society/ Page 4 of 5