The developer of Platon connects regions to a monitoring system of the national conflicts

The automated system of monitoring of the international conflicts of federal and regional levels is created since June, 2014 according to the "Strengthening of Unity of the Russian Nation and Ethnocultural Development of the People of Russia" program. For short history in the project the customer was replaced twice, and in passing it became clear that in a system there are not enough licenses for products of Microsoft and ESRI which should ensure its functioning.

Project Objectives

A system is created as the distributed information resource which is based on the technical and technology principles of federal GIS of territorial planning (TP FSIS). She should turn on data of the state and municipal information resources and information systems on a status, use and restrictions of use of the territory of the Russian Federation.

A system should provide acceptance, processing, transfer, storage, display and data analysis, modeling and forecasting of a situation.

Functionality of a system

A system should allow:

• reveal the territories dangerous in terms of emergence of interethnic strength that will create an opportunity to carry out purposeful work on warning of the interethnic conflicts;
• estimate the impact of migration processes on interethnic strength in specific territories;
• determine long-term trends by change of ethnic structure of the population on certain territories and also lines of contact of areas of resettlement of ethnic groups;
• reveal communications between socio-economic factors and problems of ethnic character;
• carry out contrastive analysis of territories (as at the level of regions, and municipalities), to group in the nature of problems and dynamics of change of a situation;
• visualize information (including dynamic) allowing to clearly demonstrate spatio-temporal trends of processes
• to regularly update information on ethnic processes in scales of the whole country;
• estimate work of the management of regions on problem solving of the international relations;
• create reports and prepare recommendations, both for the country leaders, and for certain regions.

Works should be performed in three stages: the end of the first of them is designated December, 2014, the second – December, 2015 and the third – December, 2016.

Project History

The first contractors

In June, 2014 the Ministry of regional development concluded the government contract^[1] with "The center of information technologies and systems of executive authorities" (TSITIS) of 63 million rubles on execution of works on condition monitoring of the international and ethnoconfessional relations, sociological monitoring of key indicators of a status of the international relations in Russian regions.

The project should be implemented in three stages: the termination of the first stage is designated December, 2014, the second – December, 2015, the third – December, 2016.

In September, 2014 the Ministry of regional development which was initially acting as the customer on creation of a system was abolished by the decree of the Russian President. Its functions on development and implementation of state national policy passed to the Ministry of Culture, and together with them and functions of the customer under the contract for creation of a system. Terms of the contract at the same time remained the same.

In December, 2014 the Ministry of Culture accepted from TSITIS works on the first stage of the project and paid for them 21 million rubles as it was provided by government contract conditions.

Transfer of a system to new department, detection of a shortage of licenses

In April, 2015 Russia the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs to which in October the Ministry of Culture assigned all rights and obligations for the government contract to creation of a monitoring system was created.

In the delivery-acceptance certificate of documents on the project the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs points to lack of necessary software in the transferred system. In particular, the agency missed the server licenses ArcGIS and ArcInfo for a workplace of the analyst/administrator of data and services and software of Portal for ArcGIS for creation of the geoportal. In the list of necessary software there were also no licenses for the Microsoft SQL Server.

The Ministry of Culture transferred a monitoring system of the international conflicts of Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs with the software incomplete list

The Ministry of Culture could not comment on TAdviser lack of a number of software licenses in the transferred system, having referred to the fact that in connection with delegation of power on the international relations in Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs in the ministry the specialists who were engaged in creation of a system do not work any more.

In TsITIS by the time of the publication of the text did not answer questions of TAdviser.

In the Russian distributor of software of ArcGIS –Esri CIS – stated to TAdviser that the Ministry of Culture did not buy from them the license ArcGIS within this project. Added to the companies that they also have no data on non-licensed use of software in department.

Concerning a possibility of use in this system of other software (not ArcGIS) in Esri CIS said that as their company is not a participant of this contract, has no sufficient information about its properties and features.

"It is quite probable that another software can be used, but, most likely, it will demand significant alterations of the system, review of its functional and technical characteristics", - believe in Esri CIS.

Representatives of the company added that if the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs as the new owner of this system, makes the decision on continuation of works on the contract and will begin the corresponding procurement procedure, Esri CIS will be ready to take part in it.

Creation of a system by forces of Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs

In September, 2015 reported to Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs what is going to start in the nearest future new model of monitoring which allows to predict the international conflicts, in several pilot regions. Among them - Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, the Crimea and Sverdlovsk region.

The source in Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs told TAdviser that the program part of a system transferred by the Ministry of Culture, their agency did not use, only documentation - the concept of creation of a system.

According to the source, for creation of a system of Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs uses national fund of algorithms and programs. Instead of ArcGIS in a system GIS based on the free software, and the card - from Rosreestr is used. Besides, the agency uses software, developed earlier for the benefit of the Ministry of Health.

The new contractor as a result of tender at the end of November, 2015 selected Regioncom company. The amount - 14.3 million rubles.

Replication of a system to regions of Russia

On February 24, 2016 the Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin held a meeting of the Interdepartmental working group on questions of the international relations during which it was mentioned that the monitoring system of the international relations in the pilot mode works in 50 regions of Russia.

"A system allows to monitor quickly conflict situations on the international soil", says the Government.

Alexander Khloponin suggested to create the situational center of monitoring of the international relations and to accelerate start of an information system of monitoring of the conflicts in regions

Within a monitoring system the Deputy Prime Minister suggested to create the situational center for more rapid response to the arising risks.

According to the results of a meeting of the working group it was recommended to heads of territorial subjects of the Russian Federation "accelerate holding actions for the purpose of ensuring full-scale start" monitoring systems since April 1, 2016.

the Developer of Platon connects regions to a monitoring system of the national conflicts

In the summer of 2016 Russian regions continue to be connected to the monitoring system of the international conflicts developed by Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs which should be entered in Russia until the end of 2016. In particular, the Government of Sverdlovsk region announced in August readiness to pay 2 million rubles of the company which will connect the region to the national system of Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs^[2].

The corresponding request for tender in August was posted by the government of Central Ural Mountains on the website of state procurements. The auction is appointed to September 19.

According to technical documentation of purchase, for 2 million rubles the contractor should connect on the Internet eight computers of the regional government and 78 computers in municipalities to the system placed on servers of Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs. Besides, the contractor will need to carry out all necessary settings and instructing of officials. At the same time he is obliged to provide confidentiality of all information obtained from the state customer.

So, within connection the Sverdlovsk officials will get access to the system collecting and analyzing information on the international and interfaith relations from social networks, blogs, official departments, regional media, the websites and other sources.

A system gets data on objects of monitoring from a number of registers, in particular, enter this list: "register of the Cossack associations", "register of communities of the small people", "register of NPO", "register of foreign NPOs", "register of the religious organizations", "register of the foreign religious organizations".

At the same time a system reflects a geographical binding of a certain message from any source (a post, official release, etc.) to the specific area: to the region, municipality, street or even house. Also official departments on which activity "development and harmonization of the international and interfaith relations" depends will be reflected in the map of Sverdlovsk region, namely: regional and local executive authorities, medical and educational institutions, sports constructions, religious objects (churches, mosques, cemeteries), monuments of architecture and subjects to worship, police stations, departments of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

According to the website of state procurements, the corresponding requests for connection to a system were also placed by some other Russian regions. The amounts of purchases vary from 1.5 million to 2.3 million rubles. In Yugra, the Pskov region, the Chuvash Republic and in Kamchatka Krai auctions are already ended, in all listed regions the Moscow company "Progress Software" became the winner. This firm is one of system developers of Plato.

Agreement with Sputnik

On March 30, 2016 "The search Sputnik portal" signed the agreement with Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs on use of search technologies and technologies of processing of large volumes of data with the purpose of increase in efficiency of condition monitoring of the international (interethnic) and interfaith relations.

The document was signed by the head of Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs Igor Barinov and the CEO of Sputnik Dmitry Malinkin.

Within cooperation Sputnik will help the agency to collect and index information on the international and interfaith relations from the Internet, to analyze activities of users of the websites and services, to conduct the machine learning based on morphological, linguistic and cognitive analysis intended for the analysis of the websites.

Also the agreement provides that users of the monitoring system developed in Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs will use the protected browser of Sputnik supporting the TLS protocol with the Russian cryptographic algorithms for access to it.

Monitoring of Viber, WhatsApp and Telegram

[1] The deputy head of department of monitoring of Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs Roman Safronov told about development plans for the systems capabilities assuming observation of popular messengers and creation of IT infrastructure for acceleration of reaction to the conflicts in August, 2016 in an interview of TAdviser.

Notes