OREANDA-NEWS. On 19 February 2009 was announced, that on results of 2008 the highest information openness of administration sites is observed in 8 regions of Russia, including the Republic of Karelia. Also among the leaders there are St.-Petersburg, Rostov, Omsk, Novosibirsk and Amur regions, Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous district and Stavropol Territory. Director of the Institute for Information Freedom Development Elena Golubeva has told of it at the press conference on February 11.

At that, the information openness degree of administration sites on the average across Russia is assessed by researchers as the lowest. Among the most closed departments there is the Administrative Department of the President of the Russian Federation, and a number of federal departments do not have access to the Internet at all.

As a whole, the degree of information openness of sites of federal executive body has made only 19.8%. It means, that more than 80% of information on work of these departments are not reflected in their sites. In regions the situation is better, than at the all-Russian level. Thus, the degree of information openness of regional enforcement authorities achieves 38%, and 44% for the legislative bodies.

According to the news agencies, on February 12 at the Meeting of the Presidential Council for the Development of the Information Society in Russia President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev spoke of the country's backlog in the field of using modern communication technologies. Head of the state has declared: "In recent years, information technology and information services have become quite a substantial part of Russia's non-commodity exports, something approaching a billion dollars. Whatever we’ve done is not good enough, because judging by all the key indicators we are still terribly far behind the most developed nations in this regard." President considers the e-Government implementation the mainstream of work.

Last July at the exit session of presidium of the State Council of the Russian Federation held in Petrozavodsk Dmitry Medvedev has pointed out: "As everyone knows, information in the information society is a product for mass consumption and a powerful economic resource. Moreover, the information sector itself is in an economic sense growing much faster than other sectors, and sometimes seems completely self-contained vis-а-vis other projects. The development of such technologies directly affects advances in science and technology, the efficiency of public administration and even the political system by increasing access to political institutions, and thus extending democracy."