The Government of Moscow winds down the project on data collection of pedestrians for 155 million rubles because of innovations in iOS and Android

2021: Closing of the project because of innovations in iOS and Android

As it became known in the middle of January, 2021, the Government of Moscow winds down the project on data collection of pedestrians because of innovations in operating systems iOS and Android.

As specifies Kommersant, function of dynamic replacement of the MAC addresses is provided in upgraded versions of mobile OS therefore to receive unique addresses of phones will not come out.

The experts polled by the newspaper also consider that a system can be useless, and the fact that updates of IOS and Android can interfere with its work, was known already at the time of signing of the contract. So, the updated Android 11 and iOS 14 appeared in September, 2020. Changes in OS provide dynamic change of the MAC address. At the same time, according to the newspaper, at the end of December, 2020 the Information Technologies of the Future company contractor reported on end of the first stage of works and after acceptance received 62.8 million rubles from TsODD.

The Government of Moscow winds down the project on data collection of pedestrians because of innovations in iOS and Android

According to the head of the State Duma Committee on Informational Policy, Information Technology and Communication Alexander Khinshtein, action of procurement authorities who did not consider the fact of updating of mobile OS, can become the check reason.

It is difficult to estimate actions of the mayor's office in this case. On the one hand, if competition was announced before it became known of the future updates and that the purchased solution will be useless, colleagues from the mayor's office can only sympathize: technology revolution much quicker than bureaucracy. With another if it was initially clear to those who carried out purchase that the technology will become outdated, then the spent means are direct loss to the budget — he told.

According to the technical director of QRator Labs Artem Gavrichenkov, creators of any information systems should estimate correctly projects on a preliminary stage with a careful eye to actions of the large IT companies.^[1]

2020: Plans for development of the system of monitoring of a passenger traffic

On October 20, 2020 it became known what Center of the Organization of Traffic (COT) of Moscow will spend 155.3 million rubles for a passenger traffic monitoring system. At stops public transport within half a year will place 220 hardware-program complexes (HSC) for collecting of the MAC addresses of the user devices and to monitor on them the movement of pedestrians.

As reported in TsODD, a system is necessary for improvement of work of transport and also will allow the mayor's office to find without requests of mobile operators detailed information on movement of citizens for hour, day, week, month and year. Collected information will go to a uniform Data storage center under control of the Moscow Department of Information Technology.

The technical project of the project is made proceeding from practice of Singapore, London and Berlin and does not provide obtaining the personified data. According to representatives of TsODD, a project objective — as much as possible to improve quality of pedestrian movements and work of city transport.

The auction was won by Informatsionnye tekhnologii budushchego LLC, but purchase is suspended because of the complaint of one of potential participants of Prof-IT Group LLC: it found violations in the tender. ^[2]

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