On December 14, the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) held its annual conference, Runet 2016: Year’s Results. The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ was a partner of the conference and operated a stand at the event to showcase the achievements of the .RU and .РФ national domains.
The conference opened with a plenary session, during which speakers summed up the year’s results. Coordination Center for TLD .RU Director Andrey Vorobyev said that 2016 was quite a challenging year for the global internet governance community. “The IANA transition was completed in September 2016, and it would take all of 2017 to move to a new system of digital identifier distribution, since all stakeholders have changed.” Mr Vorobyev went on to say that one of the key trends next year will be youth becoming involved in internet governance. In fact, youth participation will be among the main topics at the Russian Internet Governance Forum that will take place on April 7 in Innopolis.
The opening session also featured presentations by Leonid Levin (State Duma Committee on Information Policy, IT and Communications), Ruslan Shagaleyev (Innopolis), Andrei Kolosovsky (Microsoft), Kirill Varlamov (Internet Initiatives Development Fund), Dmitry Marinichev (internet ombudsman), Andrei Kolesnikov (Internet of Things Association), Mikhail Osin (Ozon.ru), Ivan Kurguzov (RAEC/ E-Commerce Cluster, Oborot.ru), Fyodor Virin (Data Insight), Artyom Inyutin (RAEC/ Startups and Investment Cluster, TMT Investments), and others. The speakers noted that in 2016 the government paid special attention to the development, security and stable operation of the internet’s critical infrastructure, paving the way to the adoption of a new information security doctrine and a law on critical infrastructure.
The plenary session was followed by a breakout session Runet Economy, during which Andrey Vorobyev presented a joint project by CCTLD and the Higher School of Economics to create a statistics monitoring system. This system can be used to develop integrated indicators related to the development of the Russian segment of the internet for every Russian region and industry, which will provide a convenient tool for assessing government policy and tools, business activity and network technology penetration.
Andrey Vorobyev said that the monitoring system would serve as a platform for collecting all sorts of data from open sources and the expert community. This system can be used to conduct research on various trends and categories. A research methodology is currently in the making, and the monitoring system is expected to be launched in early 2017.
