The tender "Digital Break" What it will be also that will give to participants of the Interview with the leader of the project Oleg Mansurov
On April 3, 2019 the All-Russian tender "Digital Break" directed to identification of talents and formation of community of leaders of digital national economy started. The leader of the project Oleg Mansurov told about the purposes and practical aspects of carrying out tender in an interview of TAdviser.
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First of all, tell, please, about the project.
Oleg Mansurov: The main objective of our tender - to give to the IT professional and some other specialists concerning creation and distribution of IT systems, an opportunity to implement itself, to join ambitious national projects, to solve socially significant problems in a number of key industries - health care, housing and public utilities, education, etc.
Tender consists of two main formats – online testing and hackathons. Till May 12, 2019 there is order taking, from May 16th to May 19 we carry out online testing. It will take place on fifty skills - a number of programming languages, a number of theoretical aspects of creation of information systems, design of the software, project management, management of products, financial and the business analysis and some other. Apparently – very various range.
Those participants who will undergo online testing will have an opportunity to integrate in commands then we will hold regional selection hackathons in 40 cities of the country from June 8 to July 28. We expect that on the basis of their carrying out about 600 commands which we will invite to a final hackathon at the end of September will be selected where we will play 20 nominations corresponding to national tasks.
Why the hackathon format was selected? It is, as a rule, applied to the fast solution particularly acute in enterprise scales or specific industry of tasks. And you have after all a bit different purposes …
Oleg Mansurov: First, it is necessary to tell at once that our project is not formal. We have no especially strict requirements limiting the professional grade of participants. However we after all assume that this level is higher than basic. Existence of profile education is not required too. It is rather on the contrary, it is supposed that among participants there will be also those who in different time finished rates and also those who were guided only by self-education. And the last will be explicit much.
We will solve specific objectives within the hackathons, of course, and it anyway is our purpose. But here another is not less important.
One of the major tasks is formation of cross-disciplinary commands which then will solve problems of information technology implementation in our life and development of digital economy, in particular. It is clear, that the speech goes not only about programmers here. We want to see there and design specialists, both managers, and marketing specialists. For them we provide special tests. And for the purposes of optimal formation of such collectives the hackathon too well approaches.
A certain ideal vision of the created command from our party are about 5 people from whom three programmers, one designer and one manager / marketing specialist. It on average, of course. We, certainly, will be glad if to us the created commands come to tender though, once again I will repeat, one of important project objectives just is formation of similar viable commands in the IT most different directions. It will promote, including, and market structurizations.
Concerning restrictions of tender I can tell that if they also are, then the most minimum. Persons not more young than 18 years having citizenship of the Russian Federation can participate in it.
When you speak about market structurization, you, obviously, mean some target reference points. What they?
Oleg Mansurov: First of all we, of course, are guided by national projects. Their purposes are accurately formulated, and generally, from positions of competent professional approach to display these reference points on the purpose which we put at team building and finally and on specific tasks of a hackathon, not and it is difficult. But we need to consider also modern requirements for automation and digitalization of business from commercial and non-profit organizations and also public institutions. At least requirements of the key organizations for development of economy and social life of the country and society. And it is already more difficult task. All the same there is a lot of such key organizations, all these requirements versatile, do not keep within (and should not keep within) a uniform vector. Means it is necessary to consolidate competently them, and it is just our task. Further these requirements can be formulated in very different terms, and we should lead all this to a uniform format.
Using specially created expert advice where representatives of Mail.ru, Rostelecom, Rosatom, Megafon and other companies enter, all of us solve these problems. And then target reference points begin to appear very accurately, having at the same time the objective nature.
How final requirements to a test stage and tasks to hackathons are formulated?
Oleg Mansurov: Here we work in close partnership with the leading educational institutions of Russia, - such as ITMO, MIPT, MSTU of Bauman and some other. They help us to classify requirements and to make competent formulations. Besides, we connect specialists from the different IT companies to validation of tests. Also it is necessary to mention once again expert advices which define the general vectors and the directions of tasks.
Now information technologies nearly directly are associated with Big Data, machine learning, Internet of Things and yet, perhaps, in couple of concepts. At the same time there is more to come IT …
Oleg Mansurov: As I already told, the general vectors of tasks are generally defined by expert advice which includes the large companies with very broad spectrum of problems of information support of business. Their list is on the tender website. Besides it is the companies from different branches of the economy. As soon as we consolidate their opinions, at once it becomes visible that problems of development of digital economy (and together with it the directions designated in a question) occupy there, of course, very noticeable role. However their share is not equal to 100%. In detail here it is difficult to speak about structure, but I can tell that the noticeable place is allocated to web development, the built-in systems, some business applications.
As far as, in your opinion, other components of an IT ecosystem are ready in order that activity of the teams formed in a project deliverable was effective? In other words, whether there can be such situation when the project is able to provide mass formation of collectives about which you spoke, and, say, adequate IT infrastructure for their full-fledged work will not be simple to be enough further?
Oleg Mansurov: It is the correct question, and we began to think over it strongly in advance. I can tell that if we started with the same initiative, say, about five years ago, then we, really, could face a large number of technology barriers. Today the situation rather return – the necessary IT infrastructure is, and there is not enough personnel. From the state within the "Personnel for Digital Economy" project already now the number of budget places increased twice and reaches 45 thousand. In the nearest future it is supposed to bring this indicator to 120 thousand budget places a year. So, I will repeat, the speech about deficit of specialists, but not about a lack of infrastructure.
How will be estimated the work done during tender?
Oleg Mansurov: We have short-term and medium-term indicators. The number of people who based on participation in our project improved the career opportunities is among the first, for example. So or successfully found a job, or started the business. Further we intend to monitor conversion. So to watch how many participants came to an input of our project and what tasks will reach the final, already being quite almost mature on setting and the collectives participating in their solution. We already have preliminary estimates of this conversion.
There are also long-term goals which are generally connected with development of society through understanding by the mass of the people of participating in the project what technology, business and social tasks face our society what problems need to be solved, first of all, in what direction to move. Structural reconsideration of priorities is also very important. Economic and social ecosystems of society (not only, by the way, Russian) are like that that on activity of very small, but strong and well focused on some task collectives can depend more, than on the daily activity of the big companies connected with million and billion turnovers. It occasionally seems illogical, but understanding of this fact is extremely important for society now. Promotes the solution of this task, including, and our project.