Digital Solutions IT Forum

Plenary session Achievements. Challenges. Priorities. Mikhail Mishustin visited an exhibition of IT products ahead of the plenary session.

The Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media is holding its first Digital Solution IT Forum. Supported by the Government, the event brings together Russian IT leaders and senior government officials for promoting dialogue on the digital transition in all its aspects.

The forum is taking place on November 12-15 at the Russia National Centre in Moscow. It opened with a plenary session on enabling Russia to achieve technological leadership and carrying out the Data Economy national project. The plenary session will also offer an opportunity to outline key tracks for developing the IT sector.

During the forum, the Russia National Centre is hosting an exhibition of the best Russian IT products. It includes eight themed sections on the key digital development tracks: Communications and the Telecom Sector, Public Services, Software, Artificial Intelligence, Platforms and Services, Cybersecurity, Russian Hardware, and Talent and Education.

The forum's business programme covers three thematic blocks: businesses, society, and federal and regional government agencies, with each day of the forum devoted to a specific block. Overall, the business programme includes over 90 sessions and over 600 speakers.

The award ceremony for the Digital Solutions national prize winners is also scheduled to take place on the sidelines of the forum to acknowledge IT projects that have made outstanding contributions to promoting the country's digital transition.

Plenary session of the forum

Excerpts from the transcript:

Mikhail Mishustin: Good afternoon, friends, colleagues.

Welcome to all participants and guests of the first Russian Information Technology Forum "Digital Solutions," which has brought together experts, IT industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and representatives from Government bodies. Without a doubt, it provides an excellent opportunity to discuss the future of the digital transformation of our economy and the creation and implementation of innovations in the broad sense of the word. Together, we can put together a strategy for further steps aimed at achieving the country's technological leadership which is one of the national goals approved by the President.

The domestic IT industry holds leading positions in terms of the rate of growth of key indicators over the past five years among all major sectors. During this period, its contribution to GDP has almost doubled to 2.4 percent.

The software development segment has grown by one-third in the first half of this year alone, thus setting new record highs.

Most importantly, more competitive products enjoying high demand are being produced as confirmed by a large-scale exhibition taking place today, which we visited earlier. It features Russian-designed operating systems for mobile and other devices, which we discussed in detail as we were touring the booths, as well as database management systems, data processing centres, and an array of important office solutions for corporate communications, software and hardware systems, digital assistants, and AI agents, among others.

These products enjoy demand, no question about it. Sales of domestic IT services and products are steadily growing. Their total sales volume grew by more than 14.5 percent in the first half of this year.

Companies are investing heavily in business expansion, modernisation, and, importantly, research and development, as well as in building infrastructure for growth and use of AI and cloud solutions. In fact, they are laying the foundation for long-term technological leadership.

Fixed capital investment by IT enterprises amounted to about 300 billion roubles in the first half of this year, thus exceeding the telecom operators' combined investment for the second consecutive year.

It is important to keep the momentum achieved through the coordinated and truly team-driven efforts by businesses, developers, and clients, as well as, without a doubt, through the talent of our innovators, who boldly bring their creative ideas to life.

The unprecedented preferences granted to our IT industry at the President's instruction were instrumental as well. As you may remember, they were introduced in several stages, first, for accredited organisations. This status was available not only for software developers, but also for digital enterprises in the real sector that create products that enjoy demand, such as e-commerce platforms, online cinemas, cloud services, cybersecurity solutions, and much more.

The Government support measures have produced tangible results. Last year alone, accredited companies contributed nearly 6 percent to the country's GDP, and their revenue increased by 27 percent to 12 trillion roubles.

Given the importance of the IT sector to the Russian economy, we continue to pursue policies to support it.

Starting next year, low-interest social insurance premium rates of 15 percent will apply to this business sector, which is half the rate applicable to other industries. In case an employee's income exceeds the threshold base, these contributions will be even lower at 7.6 percent.

In addition, the profit tax rate will not exceed 5 percent.

At the request of entrepreneurs, the exemption from value-added tax on sales of domestic software products has been maintained.

Meanwhile, buyers of Russian software and hardware systems listed in the official register will continue to be able to deduct these expenses at a double rate, thereby reducing their taxable profit base.

For the IT industry to remain successful, it is essential to enhance cooperation between private businesses and the state.

We must move forward as a team, colleagues.

I want to point out the most promising areas.

Above all, they include further development of the platform economy. According to the Higher School of Economics, it currently accounts for about five percent of Russia's gross domestic product and opens new opportunities for people and businesses.

Convenient services that save time and effort are becoming more accessible to people.

Convenient services that save time and effort, are becoming more accessible to people, and everyday life is unthinkable now without many of them. Millions of people make online purchases, use digital systems to order services and leasing, banking applications, reference and entertainment resources, and many others.

Speaking about private business, companies got a new method of arranging their activities - optimise operations, bring products to market faster, simplify logistics and interact with the consumers in general.

In Russia, this can be done using over a dozen of platforms, and all of them are competitive.

The e-trade volumes have grown by over a third to exceed five trillion rubles in the first six months of the year alone. A considerable contribution to this market increase has been made by major universal internet platforms, i.e. marketplaces. On the President's instruction, the Government is improving the legal framework to protect the interests of the marketplace users and the business people selling their goods and services there. To this end, the relevant federal law has been drafted on the basis of the feedback from business. The law has been adopted and will come into force next October.

I would also like to point out that marketplaces are facilitating the development of related industries.

For example, goods from online stores can now be delivered using unmanned rovers in three major Russian cities. These vehicles can travel up to 70 kilometres on a single charge. A method that seemed futuristic only yesterday is becoming increasingly affordable and already costs less than traditional courier services. This benefits both entrepreneurs and consumers.

The next area I would like to highlight is the continued focus on substituting foreign software.

Foreign companies' withdrawal from the Russian market has created opportunities for the domestic information technology industry, opportunities that Russian developers have successfully used. Many companies have significantly increased the maturity of their products and filled the emerging niches with their own solutions.

Russian-made basic system software is being actively implemented. This includes operating systems, office suites, and virtualisation platforms. Sales of such software have doubled over the past three years.

The corporate segment is also developing dynamically. Enterprises are transitioning to domestic enterprise resource planning systems. We discussed these industrial solutions at the CIPR conference. Competition in the market is growing, and new players are joining it. The performance of domestic products now meets the requirements of the largest corporations.

Specialised versions are being released for individual industries.

For example, in mechanical engineering and construction, Russian software for automated design, engineering calculations, and lifecycle management are now widely used. A leading metallurgical holding company has developed its own mathematical model for controlling a cold rolling mill and a unique high-precision system for measuring the profile of hot-rolled metal. These are significant technological achievements, innovations we thought until recently we had lost.

More than 50 major industrial corporations are jointly developing an open automated process control system. This initiative addresses two key tasks: first, ensuring the reliable operation of enterprises, and second, achieving compatibility among equipment produced by different manufacturers while maintaining flexibility for future modernisation. An open-source software controller - the core component of this automation platform - has already been created. We learnt about this development at the CIPR conference this summer, and we look forward to further successes from the project's developers.

The government continues to support demand for domestic digital solutions. They are given preferential status in procurement by government agencies, state corporations, and critical information infrastructure facilities, as well as under departmental digital transformation programmes.

The President has underscored that our strategic objective is to amplify the use of national software solutions across key sectors. We continue to make steady progress towards this goal.

To expedite the development and implementation of such products in industry, industrial competence centres have been established, as you will recall. These centres have brought together major clients and software developers to actualise in-demand initiatives, including those backed by the state. Many of the corporate software products I have mentioned are, in fact, the result of these efforts. Thanks to these initiatives, other applied solutions have also emerged - for instance, luggage tracking systems, operational transport management systems for Russian Railways, an aviation service platform, and much more.

Across almost the entire country - in 78 regions - more than 1,200 domestically produced fourth-generation base stations have been installed. By the end of this year, the production of 3,000 units of such equipment across various standards will be completed at the Dubna factory site, as we have witnessed today.

At the end of October, another application process for the implementation of particularly significant projects under the industrial competence centres concluded. This, as a reminder, represents third wave. Selected initiatives will receive grants ranging from 100 million to 2 billion roubles. The total volume of support this year may exceed 8 billion roubles. These funds can be allocated to cover up to half the costs of developing new solutions. Moreover, we have significantly refined the criteria for selecting winners. The potential for replication, projected sales revenue, and applicability to critical information infrastructure facilities will now be taken into account. Developers executing such projects will also attain the status of systemically important entities.

To support the adoption of new domestic programmes emerging from the industrial competence centres, we will continue to reimburse large industrial companies for up to half the cost of these solutions.

Overall, we will persist in creating the conditions necessary for the development of the industrial software market, taking full account of the needs of our industries. Further details on all proposals will be discussed this summer at the relevant CIPR conference.

I would like to take this opportunity to urge you to join this effort without fail.

The third priority for joint action between the state and business is the expansion of domestic computing capacity and the strengthening of Russia's radio-electronic industry.

The Government has allocated substantial resources to bolster production in this sector. Over the past three years, more than 300 billion roubles have been invested in domestic electronics. A concept for the development of testing grounds and a distributed laboratory for the trial operation of serial equipment has been approved. A comprehensive set of measures is being implemented to create dedicated product lines - digital and digital-analogue microelectronics, microwave electronics, as well as photonics products, including lasers, lidars, transceivers, space laser communication terminals, and many other components.

We have already mastered the technologies for complex products in the fields of cryptography and information protection, industrial controllers, random-access memory, solutions for the circulation and storage of electronic documents, and much more.

Last year, sales of Russian electronic products exceeded planned targets by 6 percent. Their share of the domestic market surpassed 60 percent.

These technologies are, of course, essential for advanced development of breakthrough solutions in the field of artificial intelligence. This represents the fourth key area for strengthening cooperation between the state and businesses.

In line with the President's instructions, the Government is providing support to centers based at universities and research organisations that are conducting research in this sector. We saw one of these solutions on display at the stand today. State grants, amounting to nearly 350 million roubles each, are being allocated for such purposes.

A total of 13 research centres are currently receiving these grants. Most of them are focused on laying the groundwork for the development of strong artificial intelligence capable of self-learning. The rest are working on applied solutions for a wide range of economic sectors.

The head of state has emphasised that Russia must become a global leader not only in the creation, but also in the scale of application and integration of such technologies into all spheres of life.

In our country, AI-powered personal assistants are already being introduced across major digital ecosystems, marketplaces, and banking systems. The well-known Max robot now provides over 2 million consultations per day on the government services portal, assisting users in completing the necessary documents.

Domestic smart speakers have also become truly mass-market products. There are already 15 million such devices in use across the country.

As artificial intelligence and language models continue to spread, the demand for cloud infrastructure is growing rapidly. This sector is actively developing, too. Over the past three years, the number of racks in commercial data centres has increased by more than 50 percent. The number of enterprises using public clouds to create their own applications has already doubled. Companies are deploying ready-made cloud-based tools for client and partner interaction, data analysis, and project management. Many solutions are on par with foreign analogues in terms of quality and functionality.

It is vital that we continue to rely on domestic products. This is the foundation of data security, the continuous operation of key systems, and, ultimately, the digital sovereignty of our country.

I am instructing the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media to define the requirements for the cloud infrastructure needed to host corporate systems recognised as critical information infrastructure, as well as to outline conditions for accessing Russian artificial intelligence cloud services to address issues in public administration and social development. Friends, the time has come to decide on this.

More to be posted soon.