In March 2021, the finance ministry published a draft presidential decree on an e-passport for Russian citizens. Ministry chief Maksut Shadaev said passports in the form of a smart card and an app with a QR code would appear in three Russian regions by the end of 2022. The electronic document would include fingerprints and a photograph, as well as an electronic signature at the request of a citizen, the interior ministry said. However, as Forbes found out, the project was abandoned due to a shortage of chips caused by sanctions after the start of the "special operation" in Ukraine. Other reasons include the high cost of the e-passport: 1,000 roubles compared to 300 roubles for a paper passport.
On 15 February 2023, the issue was raised again at a government meeting. Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his support to the proposal by Maksut Shadaev, head of the Ministry of Digital Identity, to introduce a digital identity card that can be confirmed via the Gosuslugi portal.
The digital identity card will look like a QR code, the authenticity of which must be confirmed via the "Gosusluzhba" portal. The technology has already been developed and agreed with the FSB,
According to Shadaev, the Ministry of Digital Affairs has already developed technology that allows citizens to show their ID card on a smartphone when needed. "It works very simply: you upload a photo from a biometric passport to your smartphone, then a QR code is generated, which you present. And someone who wants to check you, from the mobile application "State Services" checks your age or surname, first name, patronymic," the minister said.
He noted that in "80% of domestic cases" citizens could use a smartphone instead of the original passport, and that the technology is secure.
"There is obviously a lot of demand for such services and it is necessary to speed up their implementation," Putin responded. The project must be approved by May 1.
The introduction of the digital passport was mainly held back by the population's conservatism and their distrust of new technologies that could threaten data security, explains the founder and CEO of IT company Pravo Tech (creator of the system Arbitration Case Files and My Arbitrator) Alex Pelevin. According to him, this fear is prevalent not only among ordinary citizens, but also among professionals: law firms, for instance, are used to working in the traditional way and are gradually adapting to digital technology.
"In fact, after the introduction of digital passports, personal data will be better protected because a person will be able to decide through his personal account who can use his data and who cannot," Pelevin believes.
According to the expert, many government services are already provided without paper documents: for example, documents can be submitted to the arbitration court by logging in to the ESIA (public services portal), where they are automatically certified with an electronic signature.
A digital passport will make it easier to open bank accounts, certify documents, buy fitness club subscriptions and other interactions with businesses. "The art of having your passport copied will disappear," Pelevin concludes.
The issue of e-passports in Russia has been discussed for a decade. Since then, the project has occasionally come to life in statements by government officials, but has not seen any visible development.
In 2019, former deputy prime minister Maxim Akimov said that paper passports will no longer be issued from 2022, but will be replaced by plastic cards with chips, and he even showed what such a card might look like.
The first 100,000 e-passports would be issued in the first half of 2020. The implication was that a mobile application with an electronic document could be used in cases where "special confirmation of the legal meaning of acts is not required".
Following the authorities' new initiative, VTsIOM conducted a survey in summer 2020. It showed that more than 70% of Russians were unwilling to issue e-passports because they feared the availability of data to third parties and information leakage.
According to Alex Pelevin, most countries in the world are not yet using digital passports: such projects stand alone and exist in experimental mode.
Europe has been discussing digital identification of citizens since 2019. The European Commission expects 80% of Europeans to use a digital passport by 2030. However, according to an analysis by Oliver Wyman, only five European countries are "ripe" for this technology. This means that more than 40% of their citizens use digital identity services.
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