Ministry of Communications and Mass Media is up to replace imported software with local one
According to RIA Novosti, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media is developing the measures aimed at import substitution of software. As explained by the head of the Ministry Nikolai Nikiforov, the measures could be implemented within the period from three to seven years. “We are working out a set of measures to support the development of the entire industry of the import-substituting software,” Nikolai Nikiforov said at the Taurida Youth Forum in the Crimea.
Nikiforov said that the Ministry was developing a mechanism enabling “to promote and support” the industry. “It is a time consuming process which will take three, five or even seven years in some directions,” said the Head of the Ministry. According to him, there is a dependence on import deliveries of many kinds of software, including mobile operating systems and database management systems. Nikolai Nikiforov promised that funds for realization of these aims would be attracted from extra budgetary resources. “Taxpayers should not provide funding for it. There should be some tools in the industry meant for solving this ambitious target,” said the Minister.
In July 2014 the State Duma Commission on Strategic Information Systems Development accused the major global IT companies such as Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, HP, IBM, and Cisco of monopolization of the Russian market. The deputies came to the conclusion that these corporations got most of their income in Russia at the expense of public contracts and government-sponsored companies and offered to give these orders to Russian manufacturers. The commission stated the necessity to support amendments to the law, whose aim was promotion of import substitution in the state procurement of IT products. As commission executive secretary Andrei Chernogorov told RBC, the deputies from the Committee on Science and High Technologies would probably make amendments on software import substitution during the autumn session.