State directorate of the target scientific and technical program (Rosnauka) (AIS UFTsP)

Automation of operational management of federal target programs for the benefit of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

The federal agency on science and innovations (Rosnauka) is the federal executive authority performing functions on implementation of state policy in the field of scientific, scientific and technical and innovation activity. The agency holds competitions and signs public contracts on accomplishment of project research, developmental and technology works.

Rosnauka together with the Federal agency by training is the state customer of the federal target program "Research and Development in the Priority Directions of Development of Science and Technology" (TsNTP) for 2002-2006. In January, 2005 the 2nd stage of program implementation began. The volume of public financing of the program for 2005 was 7.15 billion rubles.

The program is directed to maintenance and development of the environment of generation of knowledge and the innovation activity with the broad range of data domains and creation of the advanced technologies having commercial value for the subsequent application in various sectors of the economy.

Operational management of program implementation is exercised by the State directorate of TsNTP. Enters competence of directorate:

• the organization of independent examination of projects at all stages of implementation of TsNTP;

• monitoring of the course of accomplishment of TsNTP;

• maintaining databases;

• execution at the request of the state customers of a part of functions of the organizer of tenders on contractual conditions and on a grant basis.

The scientific coordination council of TsNTP also takes part in program management, support of contracts is executed by the company monitor. As the contractor on the project the NAUMEN company, the leading Russian developer of software solutions for business and authorities acted.

For the project in FA "Rosnauka" the NAUMEN company proposed the solution which is completely based on program components with open source codes. Thanks to the selected technologies it was succeeded to reduce project cost and to reduce time of its implementation.

Project Goals and Objectives

The main objective of the project – to provide to Directorate of TsNTP the effective tools allowing to perform functions of operational management of the federal target program in the conditions of intensive interaction with a large number of participants of the program – external experts, contractors of contracts, the staff of Rosnauka, company monitor and Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.

For achievement of an effective objective it was necessary to solve a number of problems:

• automate interaction with a large number of experts. Importance of this task is defined by the fact that the majority of contracts within TsNTP represent projects, and high-quality examination of requests allows to select the best contractors for these projects. Each request passes from 3 to 5 examinations, the total quantity of examinations according to requests makes more than 10 thousand a year;

• automate the document flow accompanying conducting examination and approval of the contract. The flow of documents, TsNTP passing through Directorate, makes more than 100 documents per hour that makes impossible use of paper document flow;

• provide anonymity of interaction between curators of lots (tenders) and experts during examination of requests;

• provide a possibility of control of observance of the procedures connected with conducting examination, signing of the contract and control over the implementation of the contract;

• provide reporting for higher bodies on all stages of processes.

Implementation stages

Project implementation on creation of an information system for Directorate of TsNTP began in February, 2005.

The step-by-step approach considering priority of processes of management of the federal target program was initially selected. At the first stage (March – June, 2005) the subsystem of examination of bids automating the most labor-intensive processes – examination of requests and determination of winners was created. In June, 2005 the subsystem was brought into commercial operation.

The second stage of the project (July – November, 2005) included creation and start in operation of the subsystem of maintaining contracts providing processes of signing of the contracts with winners of tenders and tracking of the course of contract performance. Since November, 2005 the subsystem works in the mode of commercial operation.

It agrees technical to a task the main work on information input the interested end users – contestants, experts and contractors of contracts should perform. Based on web technologies for them the automated jobs (automated workplaces) simplifying use of a system via the Internet were implemented.

One of project tasks was security of simultaneous development and operation of a system with which hundreds of users worked every day. Works on updating of versions of software and elimination of errors at first were developed on the server, changes underwent testing on the server of testing and only then were transferred to the server which was in commercial operation.

During the project only free program components with open source codes (Open Source) were used. A system was implemented on the programnny J2EE platform using PostgreSQL DBMS. The choice of open technologies allowed to reduce the total cost of the project and to accelerate process of elimination of errors in software.

Results Thanks to creation of an information system for Directorate of TsNTP implementation of the federal target program for 2005 was provided: on the basis of the carried-out expertizes more than 1570 contracts for total amount of 10.5 billion rubles were signed.

Process automation allowed to avoid a staff increase of Directorate: today all works on process management are performed by about 20 employees.

Based on the created system effective work with a large number of experts – more than 500 is organized. The total quantity of users of a system exceeds 1400 people.

Reporting for higher bodies is provided (reports on costs of budgetary and extrabudgetary funds, compensation, indicators, program actions, etc.).

The project is implemented in short terms: operation of a system began in 2 months after the beginning of works, the general project duration at the moment is 9 months.

The project in Directorate of TsNTP became the largest IT project in state agencies which is completely implemented based on the software with open codes (Open Source). It allowed to refuse purchase costs of licenses and to allocate fixed assets for execution of works on creation of a system.

At the State Order of 2007 exhibition the Federal agency on science and innovations provided by Directorate of the target scientific and technical program took the honourable 3rd place in the nomination "The prize-winner of rating of the state customers on order placement for federal needs (according to the results of order placement in 2006)".

Current status of the project

Today using the developed information system the State directorate of TsNTP exercises control of the following federal target programs and projects:

• Research and development in the priority directions of development of a scientific and technology complex of Russia for 2007-2013;

• Development of infrastructure of nanotech industry in the Russian Federation for 2008 - 2011;

• Scientific and research and educational personnel of the innovation Russia for 2009 - 2013;

• The federal target program of development of education for 2011-2015;

• "Support of the Leading Russian Universities" project:

• Development of cooperation of the Russian universities and manufacturing enterprises;

• Involvement of the leading scientists in the Russian universities;

• Development of the innovation infrastructure in the Russian universities;

• Federal target program "Development of the Pharmaceutical and Medical Industry of the Russian Federation until 2020 and Further Perspective"