Russian Federation

[RU] Adoption of Development Strategy of Information Society

IRIS 2017-7:1/31

Andrei Richter

Comenius University (Bratislava)

On 9 May 2017, the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin approved his Decree Стратегия развития информационного общества в Российской Федерации на 2017 - 2030 годы (Development Strategy of the Information Society in the Russian Federation in 2017-2030). The Strategy supersedes a similar act from 2008, then approved by the Government of the Russian Federation.

The document consists of 65 paragraphs, divided into six chapters. The text begins with a list of general notions, followed by the description of Russia’s place in the modern information society, an enumeration of the national priorities in developing an information society, a preferential scenario for such a society and the parameters for its success.

In particular, priority is given to traditional Russian spiritual and moral values and the observance of norms of behaviour based on these values when using information and communication technologies - these values can be found among the principles laid down in the Strategy (paragraph 3).

The pace of technology, as the Strategy explains, “has significantly exceeded the possibilities of most people in the learning and application of knowledge”. Their focus in the world outlook has thus been shifted from science, education and culture to entertainment and reference-type searches, characteristic of the “massive superficial perception of information.” This form of information consumption “contributes to the formation of imposed patterns of behavior that gives an advantage in achieving economic and political goals to those States and organizations that own technology for dissemination of information” (paragraph 16).

One of the prescribed instruments of the Strategy will be the improvement of legal instruments for those media and technological platforms, which by many criteria could be referred to as the mass media outlets but legally are not defined as such. They are online online TV, news aggregators, social networks, websites, messengers (paragraph 26).