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 Russian Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications held a seminar on the Information Society. Among its participants there were representatives of federal executive authorities, scientific organizations, private sector and civil society.
The seminar, which was conducted on 11 February 2005, discussed issues concerning development of coordinated understanding of the concept of Information Society on the international level and vision of its development aims, strategic goals, objectives and resources necessary for speeding up its development, as well as matters concerning its participants and their role in these processes.
Dr. Yuri Grin, Director General of Department for International Cooperation, made a welcome address, where he emphasized the main problems concerning preparation to the second stage of WSIS, that is Internet governance and financial support to ICT development. To resolve these problems special international groups were established.
First presentation “On the Concept of Information Society” was made by Pavel Fadeev, Head of Radio Research & Development Institute (NIIR) laboratory. He adduced definition of the term developed by the Institute of the Information Society: “Stage in the development of modern civilization characterized by increased role of information and knowledge in public life, increased share of infocommunications, information products and services in gross domestic product (GDP), creation of global information infrastructure providing efficient information cooperation for people, access to global information resources and satisfaction of their social and personal needs in information products and services”. According to Mr. Fadeev, the key issues for WSIS are matters of information resources property rights and preservation of global military and political stability.
Presentation by Dr. Grin was positioned as “private comments of practicing functionary on the Information Society and WSIS”. He quoted definition of the Information Society given by a well-known Japanese researcher J. Masuda, who aimed at understanding the future evolution of society. The main principles of the future society structure represented in his book “Information Society as Post-industrial Society” (1983) are the following: “Computer technology will form the basis of new society, as its fundamental function is to replace or intensify mental labour of a human; information revolution will soon turn to new productive power and will allow mass production of cognitive, systematized information, technology and knowledge; the edge of knowledge will become potential market, possibility of resolving problems will increase, as will cooperation develop, while accumulated information will be disseminated via synergetic production and shared use; the main subject of social activity in the new Information Society will be “participation democracy”; the main aim will be realization of “time value”. Masuda offers a new, integral and attractive human utopia of the 21st century, which he called “Computopia” and which embraces the following parameters: (1) pursuit and realization of time values; (2) freedom of solution and equality of possibilities; (3) rise of different free communities; (4) synergetic interaction in the society; (5) functional unions free from over-governing authority. According to Masuda, new society will have potential to reach the ideal form of social relations, since it will function on the basis of synergetic rationality, which will replace the principle of free competition of industrial society.
Dr. Grin expressed the idea that WSIS could be called a relative failure, as it has not achieved its aims: neither developing nor developed countries received what they wanted. That is why WSIS did not have corresponding resonance in the world and passed unheeded by the majority of people. The reason to that lies in the fact that no mechanisms for developing infrastructure allowing access to knowledge were offered and no leverages were determined which would make developed countries share means for resolving this problem with less developed ones. Another reason is that key participants - media and other “content and service providers”, who load the net with real resources and services and work in production, business and other real sectors - were not invited to participate in the summit. The main problem is that information existing in the world does not reach the majority of its consumers due to the lack of infrastructure or educated people, and that advantages of using ICT, information and knowledge are not relevantly represented to the world community.
Further on Dr. Grin stressed the necessity to create a “new” International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which would deal not only with telecommunications but with information technologies as well. Only then it could play the role of WSIS coordinating structure more successfully. He also outlined priority aims in preparation of the second stage of WSIS and its documents, among which he mentioned strengthening the role of media and resources and services providers, and progress in resolving the Internet governance problem.
The next speaker, Mikhail Yakushev, Director of Legal department of the Russian Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications, member of international Working Group on Internet Governance, Director of Legal Programs at the Institute of the Information Society, informed the participants that at present there is no official briefly formulated position on Internet governance. He doubted that the Working Group would be able to draft and offer general position on this issue in the nearest future. First of all it is necessary to define issues relating to “Internet governance”. This group consists of separate experts and not of governmental representatives, which is why it would not be able to draft an official position.
Under these circumstances it is very difficult to change status quo on this subject, although this state of affairs is unacceptable. It is necessary to develop an official country’s position. It should be done by corresponding ministries, which should offer several variants to the President. This is impossible to do quickly, as there are particular interests that should be coordinated. To that end the group is working with different societies and shares opinions.
Dr. Yuri Hohlov, Chairman of the Board of IIS noted that when setting objectives involving change of quality (objectives of this kind were set by WSIS) it is necessary to envisage the following major points: 1) mechanisms for measuring progress in implementation of the adopted strategy (quantitative indicators), and 2) efficient feedback for adopting managerial decisions for implementation of particular actions. To resolve these problems it is necessary to use Russia’s potential.
Professor Yasen Zassoursky, Dean of Department of journalism, Moscow State University, called the participants to refrain from premature decisions in resolving the Internet governance problems - this process should involve all stakeholders. Russia has practically no civil society, in particular, strong community of Internet users. According to Professor Zassoursky, Information Society really exists and functions intensively. Its successful development needs political will - for example, European Union has a commissioner (Minister) on Information Society, as well as indicators of measuring development of IS. Prof. Zassoursky turned to the problem of harmful content in electronic media and Internet. He stressed its urgency but suggested to think not only about counteracting this harmful content but also about creating more valuable content while making it more accessible, especially for children which already live in the Information Society. At the end of his speech Prof. Zassoursky suggested that a report should be drafted on human measurement of the IS development. This report will be Russia’s contribution in preparation to the second stage of WSIS. He also presented the book “National Models of the Information Society” published by the Moscow State University and containing a lot of valuable information.
According to Professor Mark Krivosheev, Chief Scientist, NIIR; member of steering committee and Honorary Chairman of ITU-Russia Commission, the key slogan of WSIS is “turning digital divide into digital opportunities”. Among one of efficient tools for that he sees digital television which can provide interactivity. He suggested that Russia should develop its action plan in the second stage of summit and stressed necessity to demonstrate Russia’s successes in the course of Tunis event.
Professor Vagan Shahgildyan, Rector of Moscow technical university of communications and informatics, honored scientist, laureate of the State prize, claimed that positive results of the summit should be emphasized. One should not demand from the first summit that it would resolve all problems - this is impossible. In the course of preparation to the first stage of WSIS the major mistake was emphasizing the technological side. This mistake can and should be corrected, as unprepared services and lack of valuable content devaluate efforts on introducing equipment and technology. According to Prof. Shahgildyan, the emerging information world should be similar to the real one, and we should invent its rules. He consolidated with the view of Dr. Hohlov that quantitative indicators of progress should be discussed necessarily.
Oleg Byakhov, head of the Department of Information Society Development Strategy at the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the RF pointed out that the new structure of the European Commission during the 5th year of implementing the “Lisbon Agenda” found out that there are 140 indicators of measuring its progress. The European Commission claimed that this number should be reduced to around 25 and they should be largely simplified, which is a sound decision. As to Internet governance, Mr. Byakhov noted that Internet is just a media, and governance should cover relations and activity of people not media. Concerning content he said that at present the major part of information content on the Web is coming from the sphere of entertainment; at the same time social wealth is based on industrial consumption which has nothing to do with entertainment.
Mr. Byakhov believes that all contributions to WSIS documents have one major drawback: all of them aim at promoting their own “special opinions”. Today the mankind has a unique chance to reach consensus on principal issues, and this chance should not be missed.
President of “Relcom” company Dr. Alexey Soldatov emphasized one fundamental difference between the modern society and society at the time of Ivan the Terrible: we know more. According to him, there are two main sources of knowledge: science and art. The main feature of the Information Society is information flow from the source to consumer, when transfer of this flow takes place via education, which becomes the most important issue.
At the end of the seminar Dr. Grin stressed that the process of preparation to the second stage of WSIS had just begun, and it if crucial to support dialogue of different communities and take into account all constructive suggestions. Russian Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications will promote them and contribute to their implementation as an authorized body.
Besides Yuri Hohlov and Mikhail Yakushev, Institute of the Information Society was represented at the seminar by Tatiana Ershova, General Director.
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