In Crimea it is planned to start developing own software based on the new state-owned company “Crimeatechnology” that will allow to create its own Silicon Valley in the peninsula in the future. The “Deputy Prime Minister”, “Minister” of internal policy, information and communications of Crimea Dmitry Polonsky said that in the interview posted on the E-Government expert center website.
“I think that we will be able to organize a full-fledged and well-functioning market for IT-services in Crimea. Our plans and dreams to create own Silicon Valley in Crimea are realizable,” Polonsky noted.
The Crimean official stressed that the restrictions imposed by foreign companies for cooperation with the peninsula stimulate the development of its own IT capacity.
“We believe that any restrictions from our partners are a chance to develop our domestic market including our IT-market. Today we have created a powerful enterprise – state unitary enterprise “Crimeatechnology” that is one of our achievements. It is the largest software developer in Crimea,” Polonsky said.
According to the “Minister”, pilot projects of Crimeatechnology are already being implemented including for the purposes of electronic documents management, recording the citizens’ rights to have land parcels, electronic queues in the FMS agencies, registering for kindergartens, queues to the STSI agencies. We plan to use best practices of the enterprise in the future to develop a network of multifunctional centers of electronic state and municipal services in Crimea.
“I think that in 2015 we will be able to launch the fully-fledged, properly functioning system of these multifunctional centers on a full scale,” Polonsky said.
In the “minister’s” opinion, a free economic zone with low taxable rates creates a special attractiveness for the region.
“A free economic zone opened and began its operation in Crimea. It is very profitable to work there and, particularly, it is profitable for IT-companies to work since there are the lowest taxable rates in the Russian Federation here,” the “Deputy Prime Minister” stressed.
Polonsky also added that by reducing the presence of foreign companies in the territory of Crimea, Crimeatechnology was able to hire “good specialists, who became free from the necessity to work in the foreign companies.”
As a reminder, due to the introduction of the sanctions regime against Crimea the world’s leading services stopped their cooperation with the peninsula. Google AdSense stopped working with Crimea, Google blocked the download of updates for its browser Chrome and limited access to the Google Play application store for the Crimeans.
