The meeting was chaired by Mikhail Abyzov, Minister for Relations with the Open Government.
The idea to submit public initiatives backed by over 100,000 online signatures to the Parliament was spearheaded by Vladimir Putin in his article “Democracy and the Quality of State” published by the Kommersant newspaper on February 6, 2012. In April 2012, a working group on the creation of the Open Government system followed up on this proposal in its report. Experts recommended setting up a single portal called the Russian Public Initiative for collecting public proposals. The website was launched on April 15, 2013. The Prime Minister issued an instruction to establish a working group of experts for examining proposals that are submitted via the website and drafting resolutions on whether preparing norms and regulations to implement such proposals is advisable. The first results of the website’s operation were summed up on June 24, 2013, after Dmitry Medvedev appointed members of the expert working group.
Ilya Massukh, President of the Foundation for Information Democracy, reported on the website’s operation. Massukh said that the website is currently based on three non-technology principles: security (authorisation is managed by the Single Identification and Authentication System, and personal data is not stored within the system), adaptability (the website has a main version and a version for the visually impaired, as well as a geotagging feature) and openness (feedback option, no ideology filters).
Massukh went on to say that the proposal to ban officials and executives of companies owned by the state or municipal authorities from buying cars worth over 1.5 million roubles was the most popular initiative on the website with 83,463 votes. Other categories often mentioned on the website include transportation and roads (12.9% of the total proposals), security (8.4%), officials and civil servants (8.4%), consumers and services (8.2%). The most recurrent initiatives include restoring a minimum blood alcohol concentration level, which received 66,862 votes, cancelling road priority rights for all vehicles except those of emergency response teams – 38,835 votes, and using video recordings for initiating proceedings against people responsible for road accidents – 38,526 votes.
At the end of the meeting Mikhail Abyzov instructed the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media to join efforts with the Ministry of Economic Development to draft a progress report on these proposals and an action plan for increasing availability of the Single Identification and Authentication System. The Minister also proposed to hold a meeting on the development of the Russian Public Initiative’s website in the regions.
Source: Open Government
