Andrey Burin: Avalanche demand for IT in regions is a reality

Andrey Burin: The FORS performed the first projects in a public sector in 1991 – at the beginning of automation in our country. More and more experience was over the years accumulated, examination was increased, the range of the services offered by us spread. And today among our customers – the largest federal ministries and departments, regional and municipal authorities which put before us as tasks of automation of the internal activity, and difficult integration tasks of ensuring interaction with external systems and resources. And, if earlier the vast majority of such projects was executed by us in Moscow, then in recent years we became more active to develop the activity in regions. First of all, it is connected with creation of regional segments of the electronic government on which projects served as the beginning of complex regional informatization.

As for a share of state orders in our revenue, from year to year it remains approximately at the same level – about 50-65%.

TAdviser: Specifically in respect of the state enterprises and authorities – what examination of FORS? What projects should you implement there more often – infrastructure, integration, custom developments?

Andrey Burin: Our examination covers all needs of the state customers – from delivery of the software and its development to order before implementation, integration and maintenance. It is important that today we can offer not only software, but also completely ready to work, preconfigured high-performance computer systems of the class Oracle Engineered Systems and also other types of the equipment of Oracle/Sun.

Historically projects in a public sector began with custom developments when it was required to automate this or that process, and finished software products were not. Gradually tasks became complicated, there were new requirements connected with information search in systems, maintaining statistical reporting, collecting, storage and data analysis, information security support, etc. So gradually there was a process which will be called later "scrappy automation". Its big shortcoming was the separation of systems, their incompatibility among themselves owing to what data were duplicated, distorted and were differently interpreted. There was a need for integration and the main thing – there were new technologies and approaches which allowed to make it. Thus there came the next evolutionary stage during general informatization. But life does not stand still and offers us a new call – how to reduce ownership cost, to reduce costs and at the same time to increase performance of systems? So complex infrastructure tasks come out on top. They are solved by means of the different technologies allowing to optimize work program and the hardware including creation of distributed systems of storage and data processing, VPN networks, virtualization of servers and jobs and many other things. But it does not mean that some one type of projects completely forced out all others. More likely, they supplement each other, allowing to solve in a complex standing problems.

TAdviser: Who your largest state customers in authorities? Tell about one-two recent projects in regions.

Andrey Burin: The large project on creation of an analytical system and the data warehouse us was implemented in FMS of Russia. By request of Management of informatization of the Government of Moscow we carry out work on several projects now at once. Among them – creation of infrastructure for the universal electronic card of the Muscovite, an end-to-end multifunction system on urban governance and some other. Since 2008 we work on the project on automation of problems of maintenance of objects of road economy of the capital (dorogi.mos.ru portal). In general it is necessary to tell that Moscow became the first city in our country in which automation of different spheres of life became one of priority tasks. On our city regions especially as Moscow has a unique status of the territorial subject of the federation and city at the same time equal now.

This year we announced end of the first stage of the project on creation of a regional segment of the electronic government in the Rostov region. Before similar projects were made in Arkhangelsk and Petrozavodsk. All of them are integrated that own standard solution of FORS which provides the electronic submission of the public and municipal services meeting all the approved standards in this area is the cornerstone of the information systems developed there, and the most important - allowing our customers independently and flexibly to configure practically any regulations of interaction. Cooperation with these regions continues, systems develop, and we will support them.

TAdviser: In what feature of the standard solution proposed by you on automation of activity of bodies of the municipal and regional authority? What opportunities does its implementation create for the customer on the near-term outlook?

Andrey Burin: The key difference is that the customer is the owner of infrastructure of the electronic government. He does not depend on the supplier of the solution, and further development of a system can independently perform. In addition to a pecuniary benefit, there are also advantages of other order. The customer can expand a circuit of electronic interaction due to connection everything new and new participants of information exchange and do it by own efforts. The system developed by us has almost unlimited scaling options and accumulation of additional functionality, and thanks to industrial technologies, the standardized interfaces can be unrolled on already available regional information and technical base that, undoubtedly, optimizes the cost of ownership of these of a complex. Of course, such approach is more acceptable for regions which are engaged not one year in automation and already have elements of the constructed information and communication infrastructure and also do not test staff shortage in young IT specialists and are ready to develop competence in the field.

If to draw an analogy to transport, then we not just took the passenger to the destination and took for it money, and taught to drive it, gave the car and equipped with all necessary for fast, safe and comfortable driving in any weather and on any distances.

TAdviser: Tell whether there is between the projects on creation of regional segments of the electronic government implemented by you in regions some difference, and if yes, that in what it consists? What impact do the specifics of this or that region have on solution development on automation (better on examples)?

Andrey Burin: The standard solution bears the functionality which is already put in it which is improved then depending on specifics of this or that region. In spite of the fact that there is a standard set of the public and municipal services approved at the federal level, the regulations of their execution in each territorial subject of the federation differ. These differences result from features of the procedure of rendering service in each separate case, the list of participants of information exchange, different requirements to creation of portals (regarding functionality, the interface, structure of placement of content, algorithms of authorization of users, etc.) and also the information systems operated in the region.

So, in the Rostov region at the time of implementation at the customer standard Register and the Portal of the public and municipal services already worked, works on development of regional network of the multifunction centers of rendering the public and municipal services were continued. Therefore we were faced by a task to propose such solution which would allow to integrate all data sources and information resources within a single industrial technology platform at the maximum preserving of already operating IT infrastructure and the investments made in it.

As one more example of differences in projects it is possible to give that, as in Arkhangelsk, and in Rostov complex candidate solutions, and in Petrozavodsk – only its separate components in the form of functional subsystems are used. For example, there we were not engaged in development of the regional Portal - the customer did it itself and it must be said that very successfully.

TAdviser: How do you estimate efficiency of competitive procedures in relation to IT to projects? Whether it happened so that you did not win a victory in tender where all advantages were on your party? What would you like to change in this system?

Andrey Burin: If earlier results of tenders on placement of the state order were predictable in 70-80% of cases, then for the last 2-3 years the situation changed that can be estimated doubly. On the one hand – there are more chances for the IT companies to sign contracts with new customers. But with another – higher to come to probability grief where, apparently, the victory is obvious. We do not see anything bad that state structures prefer to work with those contractors whom they know and to whom trust, the previous experience of cooperation with which was successful. Such "predictability", in our opinion, is absolutely fair. When the student goes on examination, perfectly being prepared for it, nobody is surprised to the received "five". But also another meets – when a competition is held under specific "contractor", and his conditions intentionally are formed so that other applicants did not have chances, even when their offer is objectively more profitable. So, the bias and unequal conditions, of course, are.

The information systems used in a public sector are often unique, specially developed by software therefore and the one who most fully answers criteria of qualification and quality of works should support them. It will be much more difficult for third-party company to provide maintenance services at the high level, than the developer - at first needs to deal with the system and its functionality. Though here dumping offers from new players meet. And then often happens so that, having won under the terms of tender, they cannot provide high-quality service, but involve customers in long trials, up to legal procedures, and as a result nobody from this receives anything. The customer remains without timely and high-quality solving of tasks, and suppliers incur losses.

Exit to us seems in entering of such basic changes into the current law about state procurements it was not profitable to dump or it is even impossible. So, for example, it is necessary to return regulations that when obtaining the right to maintaining large projects the scale of business of the applicant should be considered – his turnovers should be comparable to contract amount and also at accomplishment of hi-tech works it is necessary to use most effectively the criterion of qualification and quality shown to bidders, but not to give preference to price criterion. Then the reliable mechanism for prevention of emergence in the market of the IT companies ready to artificially underestimate the prices in the absence of the experience necessary for implementation of large projects will be created.

TAdviser: By your estimates how demand for IT services grows in regions? What sort of the solution there will be most demanded – portals, the systems of electronic interaction, the analytical systems?

Andrey Burin: Avalanche demand for IT in regions is already reality. Creation of infrastructure for regional segments of the electronic government became the main driver of this process. It should be noted that in spite of the fact that many subjects of the Russian Federation use standard solutions when implementing similar projects, it does not reduce demand for the information systems automating separate functions of organizations and departments in regions in any way. Both of these trends develop at the same time at two different levels, mutually supplementing and strengthening each other. For example, if began with implementation of simple electronic document management systems, then today essentially other class of systems for decision support - BPM, BI, ECM is already required. This requirement was created just in recent years, including, together with development of the regional situational centers which cannot be just good halls for holding the operational meetings any more. For the effective organization of their work specialized tools for collecting, storage are necessary, to consolidation, information analysis and the main thing – forecasting by different indicators of activity. Therefore it is difficult to select something one – all types of solutions as everyone is aimed at a specific type of tasks are demanded now.

TAdviser: What new products and services you are going to develop for implementation in regions?

Andrey Burin: In a portfolio of FORS – the whole range of own ready-made solutions allowing regions to perform in high gear automation of different spheres of activity. Among them it is necessary to select, first of all, standard, our most demanded solutions for creation:

• regional segment of the electronic government;

• electronic document management system and maintaining archive economy;

• the regional complex information and analytical system allowing to perform collecting, monitoring and data analysis on different activities of the region;

• an end-to-end system of urban governance which can be implemented both in a complex, and component-wise – depending on priorities of this or that sphere for the city. The solution allows to create a single system of the joint dispatching service of housing and communal services of the city which will constantly develop due to connection of new services.

Besides, we propose the mobile solutions providing access to portals of state services or corporate systems of organizations by means of mobile devices, the solution in information security field and also the integrated computer systems for deployment of the most modern IT infrastructure. Now we work on creation of cloud versions of the solutions. We think that already we will shortly render services in transfer of regional information systems in clouds.