May 6, 2011
“Open government” – Public discussion of bills of the Government of Russian Federation
The trend of public online panel discussions is continuing its development. The relevantPresident’s decree has been released in February. Now media reports that on 1st of June the discussion system of legislative initiatives is going to be launched on the government.ru website – the program name is “Open Government”. Every citizen can be involved in legislative system via electronic voting.
The first bill under discussion will be “The bill on the basics of healthcare of Russian citizens”. The discussions are going to be coordinated by the Public Opinion Foundation. The biggest problem with national discussions is when they are not moderated the main thread will be buried under unnecessary noise.
All of the bills that could have social response are going to be submitted on online discussion.
Earlier, the Presidental Police Act was discussed at the similar special platform.
The “Open government program” could be useful in the elections season, so the opposition could not use unpopular initiatives for counter-agitation.
I have been representing Russia on 
Recently we launched our new project – we’ll try to collect here all of the news about development of e-government in Russia. Russian Federation, as we all know, is the largest country in the world and consists of 8 federal districts, which combine the 83 regions of the federation. That is the most important feature of our country which influences the development of the e-government there.