The role of digital platforms in public administration

Starodubova Olesya Evgen'evna Researcher; Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation 34 Bolshaya Cheremushkinskaya str., office 203, Moscow, 117218, Russia olesyastarodubova@gmail.com

The rapid development of information technology has led to the growth of digital services in public administration. Digital transformation is not limited only to the introduction of digital technologies, but leads to an increase in the efficiency of public administration under the influence of digitalization ^{[1, c. XIV; 2, p. 167]}.

Platformization is a key trend in the digital transformation of public administration. The active implementation of the platform model contributes to cost reduction, increased openness, automation of routine processes, simplification of interdepartmental interaction processes, and the emergence of new business models.

The relevance of the indicated topic is confirmed by the interest of the scientific community. Certain aspects of the functioning of digital platforms have previously been touched upon in the research of leading legal scholars in the field of public administration and legal regulation of digital technologies (V.N. Yuzhakova, E.I. Dobrolyubova, L.K. Tereshchenko, A.V. Minbaleeva, A.A. Efremova, E.V. Talapina, E.L. Sidorenko, etc.), however, they concerned private issues of the use of artificial intelligence technologies, optimization of the work of state information systems, increasing the openness of public administration, problems of protecting the rights of users, the effectiveness of public services, etc. Most of these studies were conducted during the period of the "Digital Economy", however, in the context of the transition to the "Data Economy", public relations in the field of public administration are actively developing due to the massive introduction of digital platforms and require further rethinking of the issues, which served as an impetus for the preparation of this work.

The methodological basis of this study was the formal legal method (when studying the regulatory framework and projected regulation in the field of public administration platformization), as well as general scientific methods of analysis (when processing statistical data on citizens' assessment of the impact of digitalization on the quality of public administration and violations in the field of information security) and generalization (when drawing conclusions about the directions further improvement of the legal regulation of digital platforms in the context of their increasing role in public administration).

The modern stage of public administration development corresponds to the type – transformational government – of the second stage of e-government development ^{[3, p. 139; 4, p. 90; 5, p. 71]}. The participation of civil society in public administration contributes to more effective public control.

Public administration is traditionally considered in Russian science in a broad and narrow sense. In a broad sense, it is the executive and administrative activities of public administration bodies, as well as the managerial activities of other public authorities, the court and the prosecutor's office. In a narrow sense, it is the activity of state bodies, which in the Constitution of the Russian Federation are characterized as public administration bodies – executive authorities. The current legislation reflects a broad interpretation – public administration in accordance with Federal Law No. 172-FZ dated 06/28/2014 "On Strategic Planning in the Russian Federation" refers to the activities of public authorities in the exercise of their powers in the field of socio-economic development of the Russian Federation and ensuring national security of the Russian Federation.

As rightly noted by B.V. Rossinsky, "management includes not only the adoption of a managerial decision, but also the implementation of direct managerial influence on the object of management, i.e. the execution of the decision" ^{[6, p. 9]}. Public administration is expressed in various forms, including by issuing various management acts, ensuring their execution, carrying out licensing activities, applying administrative coercion measures and imposing administrative punishment.

In 1970, UN experts defined public administration as "the process of achieving national goals and objectives through state organizations." As positive aspects of this definition, the scientific community notes the orientation towards a socially significant end result – the achievement of national goals and objectives ^{[7, p. 27; 8, p. 33]}. It seems that the introduction of digital platforms can contribute to improving the quality of public administration in terms of influencing the criterion of its effectiveness by minimizing the costs of citizens and public legal entities in interaction.

The digital transformation of public and municipal administration, the economy and the social sphere is designated as the national development goal of the Russian Federation by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated 05/07/2024 No. 309 "On the National Development Goals of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030 and for the future up to 2036". The achievement of this goal will be evidenced by the fulfillment of targets and tasks, which can be conditionally combined into thematic blocks:

1. Data-based management and creation of unified industry digital platforms:

- achievement of the "digital maturity" of public and municipal administration, key sectors of the economy and the social sphere by 2030 - automation of most transactions within the framework of unified industry digital platforms and a data-based management model, taking into account the accelerated introduction of technologies for processing large amounts of data, machine learning and artificial intelligence;

- formation of the data market, their active involvement in economic turnover, storage, exchange and protection;

- by 2030, an increase to 99 percent of the share of providing mass socially significant state and municipal services in electronic form, including the introduction of a decision-making support system within the framework of providing at least 100 mass socially significant public services in electronic form in a proactive mode or with the direct application of the applicant, due to the introduction into the activities of public authorities the authorities of the unified digital platform;

2. Eliminating digital inequality:

- increasing the share of households that have access to high-quality high-speed broadband Internet access to 97 percent by 2030 and to 99 percent by 2036;

3. Import substitution in the technological sphere:

- ensuring in 2025-2030 the growth rate of investments in domestic information technology solutions is twice as high as the growth rate of gross domestic product;

- by 2030, at least 80 percent of Russian organizations in key sectors of the economy will switch to using basic and applied Russian software in systems that support basic production and management processes;

- by 2030, an increase to 95 percent of the share of the use of Russian software in government agencies, state corporations, and state-owned companies;

4. Effective personnel policy:

- formation of a system of recruitment, development and rotation of personnel for public authorities and local governments based on the principles of equal opportunities, priority of professional knowledge and qualifications, including mechanisms for regular assessment and feedback within a single digital platform;

- ensuring by 2030 an increase in the level of satisfaction of citizens with the quality of work of state and municipal employees and employees of social organizations by at least 50 percent;

5. Information security:

- creation of a system for effectively countering crimes committed using ICT and reducing the damage caused by their commission;

- ensuring network sovereignty and information security in the Internet information and telecommunications network.

The goal of the strategic direction in the field of digital transformation of public administration is to ensure free, sustainable, secure information interaction between public authorities of the Russian Federation, citizens, the business community, as well as technological independence and security of critical infrastructure. One of the priorities is the transition of the authorities of the Russian Federation at the federal and regional levels to a management model based on automatic data collection and analysis using information platforms (Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated 03/16/2024 No. 637-r "On approval of the strategic direction in the field of digital transformation of public administration").

In the autumn of 2024, a block of national projects to ensure technological leadership was submitted to the Presidential Council for Strategic Development and National Projects, among them the national project "Data Economy and Digital Transformation of the state" (hereinafter referred to as the national project "Data Economy"), within which further development of digital platforms is planned (Message from the President To the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on 02/29/2024).

The implementation of the national project "Data Economy and Digital Transformation of the State" will begin on January 1, 2025 and will last until 2030. It will be a logical continuation of the national Digital Economy project, the implementation of which will be completed in 2024.

The National Data Economy Project includes 8 specialized federal projects. The issues of digital transformation of public administration are directly devoted to the project "Digital platforms in social sectors", which provides for the introduction of services for interacting with citizens without administrative barriers in order to increase their satisfaction with the quality of services provided in electronic form, and the project "Digital Public Administration", within which it is planned to further transfer state and municipal servants to an online format, launch and support of government websites and applications.

In this regard, it can be concluded about the course of the state towards the further implementation of the client-centered concept as an effective satisfaction of the needs of individuals and legal entities in their interaction with public authorities. Currently, in Russia, the Lean Government approach is in the process of formation ^{[9, p. 11]} - in the leading regions of digitalization, most services are available in electronic format, whereas only individual services are presented at the federal level. In general, in 2024, there is a positive trend in citizens' assessment of the impact of digitalization on the quality of public administration compared to earlier periods ^{[10, p. 101]}.

In the context of an increase in the number of information subject to closure due to the unfavorable geopolitical situation and ensuring information security, digital platforms, namely their variety – social networks, contribute to increasing transparency in the activities of public authorities obliged to maintain relevant pages (Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated 12/31/2022 No. 2560 "On Approval of the Rules of Placement by State Bodies, Local authorities local governments and subordinate organizations provide information on their official pages,...").

In order to increase the effectiveness of the implementation of the powers of public authorities and state extra–budgetary funds carried out using state information systems, a unified digital platform of the Russian Federation "Gostech" (hereinafter referred to as the "Gostech" platform) has been created. Its appearance is due to the need to level out the existing problematic aspects of the functioning of state information systems (hereinafter – GIS): the lack of a unified approach to creating GIS, the use of various software and hardware complexes, which makes it difficult to optimize the costs of their creation and further integration; the isolation and disunity of the data contained in GIS, which makes it difficult to use them in making management decisions; the lack of a unified database of information about services, functions and powers of public authorities, which prevents the possibility of an objective assessment of their implementation (Report of the Accounting Chamber of the Russian Federation on the results of the expert-analytical event "Assessment of the current state of federal state information systems with perspectives of digitalization of public administration", 06/28/2022 // https://ach.gov.ru/upload/iblock/684/pepquqogiajfpxi8zvsbpgzmdzl03uzk.pdf ).

Experts see the solution to the problem of optimizing the costs of creating and operating GIS through the introduction of uniform principles of legal regulation and GIS design, maintaining a single catalog of digital products and the transition of all GIS to the GOSTECH platform ^{[11, p. 44]}.

At the same time, the previously planned mass transition of GIS to the GOSTECH platform was not carried out, which indicates certain difficulties and requires more careful consideration of issues of improving the work of GIS.

Digital platforms open up new opportunities for the development of the economy as a whole, individual industries, regions and cities, for the effective management of programs and national projects.

At the same time, it should be noted that a legal vacuum has formed between strategic planning acts and current legislation in the context of the fact that digital platforms are being actively introduced in a number of areas of public administration: control and supervisory activities, provision of state and municipal services, rulemaking, including automation of individual elements of departmental rulemaking (digital regulations designer, which allows conducting development, coordination and registration of machine-readable administrative regulations for the provision of state and municipal services).

To date, there is no legal definition of the basic category of digital transformation – the digital platform. The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation has developed a draft federal law "On Amendments to the Federal Law "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection", as well as article 15 of the Federal Law "On the Contract System in the Field of Procurement of Goods, Works, Services for State and Municipal Needs", providing for the empowerment of the Government of the Russian Federation to determine the general requirements for the development of regulatory legal acts that are the basis for the creation of GIS and state digital platforms; clarification of the concept of "information system" and criteria for classifying information systems as state; introduction of new concepts, including "electronic service", "cloud services", "digital platform" and "state digital platform".

In particular, state digital platforms are defined as "digital platforms created on the basis of federal laws, laws of the subjects of the Russian Federation or regulatory legal acts of the President of the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation or regulatory legal acts of the highest official of the subject, the highest executive bodies of the subject of the Russian Federation, including as elements state information systems and (or) infrastructure components providing information technology interaction of systems used to provide state and municipal services and perform state and municipal functions in electronic form, and intended for digitalization of state (municipal) management in one area of activity of state bodies (local governments) and (or) public legal entities." The above definition seems to be overly detailed, requiring adjustments at further stages of the legislative process.

Another cornerstone is the balance of sufficiency and data security. Data is the foundation of digital transformation and an object of management that requires an organized work process and qualified specialists, a transparent mechanism for depersonalization and transfer to the category of big data. According to the Big Data Association, the big data market in Russia as of 2021 amounted to 170 billion rubles, by 2024 it may increase to 319 billion rubles (an increase of 90%). At the same time, the effect of the introduction of products based on big data will amount to 1 trillion. rubles'.

In part, the new version of the draft law of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation on depersonalized information, providing for amendments to the Federal Law "On Personal Data", is aimed at solving this problem. It is planned to create a state information system in which commercial entities will provide their personal data for the formation of datasets.

The Government of the Russian Federation will establish requirements for data packages and deadlines for their provision in GIS, as well as entities with the right to access datasets and access conditions (free of charge or on a paid basis). At the same time, the issue of the obligation to depersonalize personal data remains unclear.

The business community perceives the proposed regulation as a "digital tax" in the form of personal data sets, which also entails additional costs for the purchase of certified software and security tools, maintaining the necessary infrastructure to work with the state information system, and the risks of a state monopoly of working with data.

The problem of data protection is no less relevant. Currently, legislative initiatives have been prepared to improve the level of information security.

In particular, the FSTEC of Russia has developed a draft law proposing amendments to Article 13.12 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation in terms of increasing fines for non-compliance with information protection requirements in information systems from 25,000 rubles to 100,000 rubles. Tougher liability for the use of improper technical measures – the use of non-certified systems, databases and data banks, as well as non-certified means of information protection, including information of limited access and constituting a state secret.

Roskomnadzor has taken the initiative to mandatory notify him if the account owner is engaged in the dissemination of information - the obligation of owners of personal pages on social networks, whose daily audience is more than 1,000 people, to transmit information about themselves to Roskomnadzor (full name, contact information). This initiative is designed to combat fake pages, prohibited and fake information.

Legislative innovations on tightening liability for violations of legislation in the field of personal data (Federal Law No. 420-FZ dated 11/30/2024 "On Amendments to the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation", hereinafter referred to as Federal Law No. 420–FZ) are aimed at strengthening measures to protect them from unauthorized access by introducing negotiable fines for illegal transfer (provision, dissemination, access) of personal data, and the establishment of criminal liability for the illegal use, transfer, collection or storage of computer information containing personal data, as well as the creation or maintenance of information resources for these purposes (Federal Law No. 421-FZ of 11/30/2024 "On Amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation"). Thus, depending on the volume of the "leak", Federal Law No. 420-FZ establishes a fine for repeated violations for legal entities in the amount of 1-3% of turnover, but not less than 15 million rubles and not more than 500 million rubles, whereas currently the fine for companies does not exceed 100,000 rubles for the primary offense and 300,000 rubles for repeated use. These changes come into force on May 30, 2025, which causes serious concerns among representatives of the business community, as it may lead to mass bankruptcies of representatives of small and medium-sized businesses, which account for more than 62% of the total number of organizations affected by information leaks (online stores, travel companies, catering establishments, forums and others).

It seems that such harsh measures are caused by the worldwide trend of a sharp increase in the number of "leaks" of confidential information after the start of the SVO. Experts note peak values in the first half of 2023, followed by a decrease several times by the first half of 2024, including a reduction in the number of incidents of unauthorized access to large databases of personal data. In Russia, on the contrary, in the first half of 2024, there was an increase in "leaks" of information by 10%, and in the field of personal data by 33.8% compared to the same period in 2023, which is caused, on the one hand, by the geopolitical situation and active confrontation in cyberspace, on the other – insufficient attention to ensuring information security by representatives of the public sector and the business community. Strengthening information security measures will help reduce the number of "leaks" of an intentional nature, the proportion of which is 99%.

The strengthening of these measures in government agencies and financial organizations demonstrates a reduction in the number of leaks and unauthorized access, while the retail and industrial sectors turned out to be particularly vulnerable – in February 2024, there was a massive "leak" of 54 million user profiles, including personal data, addresses and passwords of profiles on the unified portal of public services and on social networks (data They are given in accordance with the analytical report "Information leaks in the world and Russia for the first half of 2024" // https://www.infowatch.ru/sites/default/files/analytics/files/utechki-informatsii-v-mire-i-rossii-za-pervoye-polugodiye-dve-tysyachi-dvadtsat-chetvertogo-goda.pdf).

An alternative and an example of soft regulation can be called the initiatives of the business community to increase the level of information security. Avito, Vimpelcom, Tinkoff Bank and Yandex have signed an industry standard for data protection that defines standards for data storage and protection, as well as providing for an annual independent audit of the organization and management of data protection, information protection policy and action plan to counter information security threats.

As a positive experience of the functioning of digital platforms in the field of public administration, it can be noted that the quality of public services and services to citizens is improved, equality of treatment and access to services is ensured, transparency of interaction, increased efficiency, and significant savings in resources.

At the same time, along with the reduction of traditional transaction costs of interaction (information collection and processing, decision–making, control, etc.), new costs of institutionalization are emerging due to the need for legal regulation of new institutional structures – digital platforms, their creation and proper functioning, and maintenance of the supporting infrastructure.

The transition to a platform model of public administration is still in the process of formation and requires the implementation of a set of legal, organizational and technological measures. A digital platform as a technological complex based on the use of data storage and transmission infrastructure, big data analysis, digital user identification technologies, the use of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies should simplify the processes of interaction between the state and citizens, the business community, government agencies among themselves and promote economic growth, rather than create additional financial and administrative barriers.