Moscow today is among the world leaders in the introduction of the “Smart City” technology. Dozens of projects are implemented, involving the use of information and communication innovations, which transform whole areas of urban life: health care, housing and communal services, transport, education, improvement. Metropolitan business is ready to actively develop these areas, in particular, the blockchain technology. But first, the federal and Moscow authorities should improve the relevant legal framework.
These issues were discussed at the conference “Moscow for the blockchain – blockchain for Moscow”, during which a dialogue was held between representatives of the executive, legislative authorities of Russia and the city of Moscow and the business community in the field of information technology. The event was organized by the Guild of Digital Economy and Blockchain Technologies of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI).
“We measure the effectiveness of the work of laws, prepare proposals for their adjustment based on the opinion of the business community, which needs clear, transparent rules of the game for many years,” said the President of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce, Vladimir Platonov.
So, for example, it is necessary to abandon excessive requirements for the identification of citizens when receiving government services in electronic form. Experts ask to legislatively fix the priority of electronic documents over the paper, so that in the future, completely abandon the paperwork. A proposal was made to recognize information systems as objects of public-private partnership agreements.
Representatives of the city authorities stressed that the drafts of regulatory legal acts are already being developed within the framework of the federal program “Digital Economy”. At the same time, the Moscow City Duma has the right of legislative initiative, according to which deputies of the Moscow parliament can submit draft federal laws to the State Duma. Therefore, if the representatives of the business community of Moscow have proposals for changing legislation in terms of the use and distribution of blockchain technologies, then after passing the initial examination in the MCCI they can be considered in the profile commissions of the Moscow City Duma.
– Metropolitan authorities and business need to clearly understand in which areas technology can be applied. Here you need to be open and offer new options for using blockchain for the benefit of citizens. Moscow already is the driver of these innovations in Russia. The technology is used in such services as “Active citizen”. There is a pilot project with Rosreestr, where it is planned to transfer data on immovable property to the blockchain platform, ” said the co-founder of the Association of Russian Blockchain Lawyers Alexander Zhuravlev.
According to him, the technology can be applied in such areas as, for example, decentralization of the storage of any important and secret data, without fear that the information will be opened by intruders. Such principles can also be used in medicine to organize an archive of patient records.
– The blockchain is a distributed database, in which storage devices are not connected to a shared server. The use of special encryption ensures that users can change only those parts of the chain of blocks that they own. They have private keys that do not allow recording and intervening “from the outside,” the expert said. At the same time, he added that the introduction of blockchain technology has a high potential in municipal elections and on public procurement sites.
However, the main obstacle to the introduction of blockchain into urban life today is the current legislation related to the storage and transfer of personal data to third parties.
– Currently, on the instructions of the Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin is preparing for the adoption of the city program “Smart City – 2030”, which will replace the “Information City”. The process of creating the necessary infrastructure is coming to an end, we need to move to a new level: to effective urban management based on large data and methods of artificial intelligence, “recalled Alexei Shaposhnikov, chairman of the Moscow City Duma.
According to the Moscow authorities, digitalization is primarily a mental transition from “document management” to “data management.” The main goal of all changes is the creation of a comfortable urban environment and convenient forms of interaction between Muscovites and authorities.
