On July 2, 2009 the VI Tver Social and Economic Forum "The Information Society", organized by the Russian Managers Association and the Institute of Contemporary Development with official support of the Presidential Executive Office, the Council of Federation of the Federal Assemly of the RF, the State Duma of the RF, the Moscow City Government and the Administration of Tver Region, opened up. The Institute of the Information Society acted as General Expert Partner.

More than 1200 people from 56 Russian regions and 5 foreign countries have already participated in the Forum, which was devoted to implementation of ICT in all spheres of Russian society’s life.

The Tver Drama Theatre – the venue of main events of the Forum – hosted delegations of heads of federal authorities and their deputies, heads of regions and big cities, leaders of public organizations, professional unions and self-governed organizations in ICT field, scientists and teachers, representatives of international government and non-government organizations.

The work of the Forum started with an opening of specialized exhibition exposing successful innovative projects of companies being implemented and proposed for implementation within frameworks of federal target programs on information society development.  By the example of the Unified Cultural Information System of Moscow City (UCIS Moscow) the Institute of the Information Society demonstrated possibility of ICT use in the system of cultural and humanitarian enlightenment.  

The plenary session of the Forum, devoted to key directions of the National Action Plan for the Strategy of Information Society Development in Russia, was opened by Dmitry Zelenin, Governor of the Tver Region. In his report he emphasized the importance of information technologies’ development in Russia, which may become one of competitive advantages of our country.

The message of greetings of Dmitry Medvedev, the President of RF, to participants of the Forum was read out by Sergei Naryshkin, Head of Presidential Executive Office. In the speech he called to search for mechanisms, which would inspire development of informatization at all levels, eliminate information inequality between regions, provide for synchronous work of federal and regional institutions in creating the information society in Russia.

Leonid Reiman, Adviser to the President of RF, reported on financing the main directions of the Plan for implementation of the Strategy of Information Society Development. According to his words, it is planned to appropriate 152 billion rubles from budgets of different levels during the initial stage 2009-2011 for implementation of the Plan, covering 117 activities, including 40 billion rubles - from regional budgets. In future additional 12-15 billion rubles will be required for implementation of the Plan. 

The speech of Igor Shchyogolev, Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of RF, was devoted to long-term target program "Information Society 2011-2018", which will replace the federal target program "E-Russia". The program, including detailed plan of informatization of nearly all budget branches, should be prepared by November 2009. The document should be agreed by February 2010, and in May it will be submitted for approval to the Government.

Within the framework of the plenary session also made reports: Vladimir Matyukhin, Head of the Federal Agency for Information Technologies, Juan Navas Sabater, Representative of the Global ICT Department of the World Bank, Aleksander Gusev, Director General of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of RF, Aleksander Piskunov, Accounts of the Audit Chamber of RF, Ilya Ponomarev, Chairman of Sub-Committee on Technological Development of the Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications of the State Duma of RF.     

Interviews after the end of the plenary session with Dmitry Zelenin, Governor of the Tver Region, and Igor Shchyogolev, Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of RF, are available at the web-site of "Vesti" TV-channel, which conducted live broadcasts from the VI Tver Social and Economic Forum "Information Society".