On July 3, 2009 within the framework of the VI Tver Social and Economic Forum "The Information Society" the session on "ICT Development and Use in the Regions and Reduction of Differences in the Level of Information Development between Regions of the Russian Federation", which was presided by Yuri Hohlov, Chairman of the IIS Board of Directors, Deputy Head of Advisory Group of the Council on Information Society Development in Russia under the President of RF, and moderated by Konstantin Zuev, Deputy Governor of the Tver Region took place.

The purpose of the session was devoted to analyse of e-development factors of Russian regions, identify the most urgent problems of regional informatization and methods of their elimination in order to overcome digital inequality.

Sergey Kalmyk, the First Deputy Head of the Moscow City Informatization Department, speaking about key problems in ICT implementation in the social and economic development of the country emphasized significant digital inequality of regions and marked the necessity of further development of the federal authorities’ policies aimed at support of regional informatization.     

Sergey Shaposhnik, Head of IIS Directorate of Monitoring Information Society Development, in in their joint report with Yuri Hohlov formulated general appraisal of circumstances, noted peculiarities of current stage of regional informatization and marked the most evident backlog zones.

Andrey Fursenko, Minister of Education and Science of RF, in his speech highlighted several actual problems of ICT use in general education institutions of Russia, which require top priority attention. In particular he proposed to intensify the development of teachers’ further training and retraining system in the sphere of ICT use in educational process.  

Participants of the section shared opinions on mechanisms of coping with existing disproportions between regions of the Russian Federation in main aspects of information development, emphasized such difficulties on the way toward information society development as outdated normative legal base, lack of unified state standards, low budget coverage of particular regions. 

At the final session of the Forum, held on July 3, 2009 under chairmanship of Yuri Hohlov, the results of work of all sections were presented, which will be used for a formulation of recommendations on preparation of the National Action Plan for the Strategy of Information Society Development in the Russian Federation.