On April 30, RIF.Online hosted the event Digital Dictation 2020: Initiative to Measure and Increase Runet Users’ Digital Literacy. The results of the largest measurement of digital literacy, the second annual Digital Dictation, were presented there. The dictation was organized by ROCIT, the Russian Popular Front and Microsoft with support of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and took place on March 28 – April 11, 2020.
The results of the national Digital Dictation 2020 were summed up by ROCIT Director Sergei Grebennikov. The dictation was taken by 330,148 (39,398 last year). The average level of 2020 participants’ digital literacy was 7.25 out of 10 points (7.15 last year). The Sverdlovsk Region (7.96 points), St. Petersburg (7.84 points), the Tambov Region (7.84 points), the Vladimir Region (7.79 points), and the Pskov Region (7.79 points) ranked as Russia’s leaders on digital literacy. Moscow finished 45th with an average of 7.27 points. Last year Moscow came 21st. Among the most difficult topics for participants were domains (this year, which marks the 10th anniversary of the Russian Cyrillic ccTLD .РФ, questions on domains were included in the dictation). For example, 80 percent of teenagers and 68 percent of adults don’t know that only the Russian alphabet can be used in .РФ.
Coordination Center Director Andrey Vorobyev noted that these results were not unexpected for the center: “Limited knowledge of domains is a typical problem of users in Russia and other countries as well, as we can see from foreign studies.”
In order to solve this problem, Vorobyev suggested establishing a digital literacy volunteer corps in the regions. As practice shows, focusing on digital literacy locally has a good effect on increasing people’s skills. Moreover, the Coordination Center will address any shortcomings and, together with its partners, organize another digital dictation to mark the 10th anniversary of .РФ, with questions on internationalized domain names.
“The Coordination Center aims to support social projects that popularize and develop the internet as well as increase the digital literacy of users of all ages. Digital Dictation is one of these projects. This is the second year in a row that we have been a partner. We think that Digital Dictation not only demonstrates various aspects of information literacy, from computer skills to the effective and, what’s more important, safe use of IT services, but also helps reveal gaps in knowledge and encourage further study, to boost one’s IT skills, so to say. Today, especially during the pandemic and self-isolation, virtual reality has essentially opened the doors to all spheres of human life: education, entertainment and entrepreneurship among others. Without a certain set of skills, this transition may prove difficult for people,” Vorobyev said on the results of the Digital Dictation.
He added that May 12, 2020 marked the 10th anniversary of .РФ, for which various events and projects have been prepared. The website 10.кц.рф was launched, featuring sections on the history of the first Cyrillic domain, greetings from .РФ’s friends and partners, and funny videos about letters of the Russian alphabet. There is also Поддерживаю.РФ for professionals. This is a project to develop an ecosystem with support of domain names and email in national languages, in the Cyrillic domain .РФ first of all. The project’s main goal is to support the .РФ ccTLD and adapt software for working with IDNs and EAI in Russian, among other languages.
The online training on introducing and supporting EAI scheduled on May 16 is also designed for professionals: email system administrators. It will provide participants with practical skills on how to configure email software and add to their knowledge of Universal Acceptance and internet internationalization technologies.
