THE CONFERENCE IN SMOLENSK GATHERED IT-SPECIALISTS OF RUSSIA AND BYELORUSSIA

The IV annual interregional theoretical and practical conference ‘Infocommunication technologies in the regional development’ opened in the Smolensk regional Philharmonic Society.

Representatives of the federal and regional bodies of state power, local authorities, business, civil society, scientific establishments, educational and cultural institutions, and mass media participated in the opening ceremony.

In his welcoming speech Governor Sergey Antufiev marked the importance of the conference that had been gathering ‘IT-people’ from our region, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, other Russian cities and the Republic of Belarus four years running in Smolensk, where they could exchange experiences and discuss urgent problems in the sphere of infocommunication technologies.

‘We ought to continue paying special attention to the development of the telecommunication infrastructure so that both townspeople and country people could have access to the Internet’, emphasized Sergey Antufiev and expressed confidence of the fact that the results of the conference work would foster infocommunication technologies and the most important adjacent spheres and kinds of business of the region.

The format of the conference includes holding plenary sessions, breakup groups, round-table discussions, and Internet-broadcast. For the first time they are going to give an account of the joint research project of the Institute for Socio-Economic Studies of Population, Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Agency on the development of information-oriented society. It is dedicated to the preparedness of the citizens for active life in information-oriented society. The report has been made on the basis of the polls among the citizens of the Smolensk region and other regions of the country.

They will also sum up the annual regional contest ‘Information technologies in education’ within the conference and present the prizes.

Reference

Electronic services are introduced everywhere in the region: an electronic appointment with a doctor, registration and acceptance of children to kindergartens, provision of medicines, formation of the electronic government, the work of the federal and regional portals of state and municipal services.

Multifunctional centres of rendering state and municipal services are set up. Such a centre works in Roslavl already, and in the current year they are to reopen multifunctional centres in Gagarin, Safonovo, and Smolensk.

The year 2011 was announced to be the Year of Cosmonautics. The first cosmonaut of the Earth, the native of the Smolensk region Y.A. Gagarin worked the way to space 50 years ago. A program of celebrations and arrangements is timed to this event. On January 27, a Space Service Centre opened in the Smolensk region, where navigational and information service will be rendered using the results of the space activity including the GLONASS system (the global satellite navigation system). It is also planned to form a breakup group ‘The use of the space activity results for the benefit of the economic advancement of the regions’ and a round-table discussion ‘The regional GLONASS-assisted system of traffic control: development prospects’ at the conference.

The recording and distribution of the CD ‘The Safe Internet: studying the experience and recommendations of policy in information security for children and youth in the Russian segment of the cyberspace’ was also timed to the conference.