The forum also became an arena for a preliminary exchange of proposals on the eve of the BRICS and SCO summits in 2021. The key events of the IT Forum were the plenary session “Russia and the World. International Information Security’s Issues in BRICS, SCO, CSTO”, Russia-China digital forum “New Digital Technologies and Information Security - Development of Trust and Cooperation”, III International Conference “Information and Communication in the Digital Age: Explicit and Implicit Impacts” under the auspices of UNESCO and many other important sessions and discussion meetings.
Within the framework of the round table “Artificial Intelligence - a Reasonable Partner”, the Center for Training Leaders and Teams of Digital Transformation of the RANEPA presented a report “Ethics and Digital: from problems to solutions”, which was prepared by a large team of authors from various research national organizations, including expert of the Center for Global IT Cooperation, head of the analytical department Andrey Ignatiev.
The report is a continuation of the work of a wide range of researchers in the field of ethical aspects of digitalization (in 2020, another report was released - "Ethics and the digital: ethical problems of digital technologies").
The work notes that “in the current situation, special responsibility fell on government customers of digital services, which was clearly manifested during the pandemic. All over the world, situational decisions to combat the pandemic were made by civil servants who had to create and adapt services in the face of chaos and uncertainty”. The great example to that is the Moscow program "Social Monitoring", which was used in the capital to track the whereabouts of residents for whom home quarantine was mandatory. The same application caused a mixed reaction from citizens, including a large number of reviews about negative experiences with the application.
Prompt response to controversial situations is an important part of communication between civil servants and citizens, which helps to eliminate misunderstandings and increase the level of trust in the product, the authors of the report say.
This joint work of specialists is a good example of positive cooperation between various platforms, since such information and analytical materials and the work of researchers in a single team contribute to the exchange of views and the determination of national positions and decisions. This is especially important for the development of Russia's initiatives and approaches to the ethical problems of digitalization at international platforms, where there is a shortage of its own Russian groundwork, research and concepts. The experts expect to continue joint projects based on inter-institutional cooperation and exchange of experience.
