The Administration of Saint Petersburg automates providing public services using IBM WebSphere Portal

On May 31, 2012 "The St. Petersburg information and analytical center" and IBM company announced end of the first stage of the project on automation of providing public services to residents. Earlier separated components of information infrastructure of the electronic government were integrated by the portal of electronic state services based on IBM WebSphere technology. Using a new system inhabitants will be able to submit the application for receiving one of 32 state services.

Implementation of the electronic government – one of strategic priorities of development of the Russian public administration. During 2011 Russia climbed in the rating of the UN development of the electronic government on 30 positions, having taken the 27th place. It occurred thanks to purposeful project implementation on automation of the electronic state services which are conducted since 2008.

The portal of electronic state services developed on the basis of IBM WebSphere technologies provides providing services to citizens of 32 types, including registration of requests for weddings, signing up in kindergartens, receiving approvals and permissions and also other types of housing and social services. Now residents of St. Petersburg can submit the electronic application for receiving public service and reduce the number of visits of the state agencies necessary for its receiving.

"Now residents of St. Petersburg do not need to stand in queues, - Sergey Bakhtiyarov, the head of department of applied design of the IC of the St. Petersburg state unitary enterprise "St. Petersburg Information and Analytical Center" noted. – Automatic feed of statements and electronic document management provide increase in efficiency of the state services. It allows to increase the number of electronic services and to raise their quality characteristics".

Initially system components as a part of information infrastructure of the electronic Government of Saint Petersburg were separate and did not allow to provide uniform process of providing state services for inhabitants. The task of creation of the integrated information space for providing citizens with services of the electronic government and the organization of effective interdepartmental interaction was set for Committee on informatization and communication. The management of Committee on informatization and communication made the decision on creation of the uniform electronic portal of state services based on technologies of IBM.

"IBM has large-scale experience in implementation of the largest projects on creation of the electronic government and the extensive range of technologies providing the high level of their implementation, - Bykov Vladimir, the director of office IBM in St. Petersburg noted. – The project implemented by us together with the Administration of Saint Petersburg provides the new level of development of the state services, becoming guarantee of liquidation of administrative barriers, simplifications of company registration, tax administration, any receiving approvals and permissions".

Software solutions IBM WebSphere Portal, WS DataPower and WS MQ became a technology basis of the new platform of providing public services. According to Gartner, IBM is the world leader in sales of infrastructure of applications and the software of the class Middleware (the report of Market Share Analysis: Application Infrastructure and Middleware Software, Worldwide, 2011).

In 2012 new project implementation phase on creation of a single platform of state services for residents of St. Petersburg started: testing of the closed part of the portal for executive authorities which have automated systems began or are absent, or require completion. For accomplishment of this task the closed portlets (automated workplaces) which provide formation of requirements to a system directly from departments were built in a solution architecture. The second project phase is planned to end by the end of 2012.