This year specialists from the USA, India, Germany, Croatia, Algeria, Iran, Indonesia and Colombia came to St. Petersburg for the second time. EGOSE is the first Russian conference covering e-governance development using big data. According to Dmitriy Trutnev, EGOSE`s chairman and deputy director of ITMO University e-Government Center, currently there are only five of six conferences of this kind in the world. Thus EGOSE contributes to globally developed discussions.

As Andrey Chugunov, Director of eGovernment Center, noted in his opening speech e-governance issues are inseparable from society`s requirements.

Vladimir Vasilyev, ITMO University rector, appreciated this idea and added that Information Technologies are very important for ITMO University`s activities and also for development of promising scientific fields.

“Translational medicine, Art&Science, urban studies, Smart city concept as well as e-government technologies are derived from IT,” said the rector. “Experts with different competencies are necessary to be involved in these composite sciences. Electronic technologies` application in state government requires combining IT, sociology, psychology, decision support systems and so forth. So now we aim to discuss interdisciplinary issues that are very important both for our state and society.”

It is planned to make a collection of articles connected with conference proceedings. This year 39 publications will be included into bibliographic database Scopus.

Oleg Kachanov, deputy director of Department of e-government development, also made his speech at EGOSE 2015.

“Supporting e-governance development we aim to provide comfortable living conditions. The point is to release people from bureaucratic quests and give them an opportunity to solve problems using their own computers. We succeeded in some e-governance projects. However it is very important to compare our achievements with international ones. It helps us understand that we have a lot of things to be done and that our target is to develop high-quality projects. Today I hope to discover international e-governance trends that can be adapted for Russian background,” said Mr. Kachanov.

Sergei Demochko, vice chairman of the Committee on IT and Informatization of Leningrad Region, shared Government`s initiative to equip with Internet all Russian settlements with more than 250 residents. 

“It is impossible to develop business in villages for obvious reasons. That is why our Government has to play a significant part in this activity because it is very important to make e-services and the Internet accessible for all inhabitants. We support the initiative of Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation to launch a large telecommunication project. It is planned to make high-speed internet accessible for 93% of inhabitants of Leningrad Region. It will positively affect IT development of our society.”

Currently organizers discuss EGOSE 2016`s time frame and its` details. ITMO University is also going to host such international conferences as IFIP EGOV and ePart in 2017.