'All schools in Tatarstan are provided with optical fiber today, even rural ones'

Feeling like part of family and small homeland history

At the beginning of the marathon, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated schoolchildren on the start of the new school year via video link from Vladivostok. The head of the state appealed to high school students with a request to help elementary school students adapt to school and also noted the importance of the ability to verify information on the Internet.

“There are a lot of information resources in the modern world. It seems like everyone can find out everything there. But there is a problem, it lies in the quality of this information. There is a lot of junk information, which is very often presented as the absolute truth. But one shouldn't believe it, because this is not the opinion of real, true specialists. The Knowledge society appeals to the opinion of real professionals in each narrow area of knowledge. And they can certainly be trusted.”

Vladimir Putin had a historical conversation with schoolchildren from different parts of the country. According to the head of the state, history is the core, the foundation of all humanitarian knowledge. This is important in order to understand the conditions in which we live today and what awaits us next. It is very important to feel like a part of the history of your family and small homeland, the president stressed.

Putin noted that it is young people who take part in all kinds of breakthrough projects. At the same time, the head of the state drew attention to that artificial intelligence or genetics is a very delicate, dangerous work in terms of possible consequences. But it is quite obvious that the development will continue one way or another. And it is pointless to create artificial barriers. Humanity should develop common criteria for working in this area.

Tatarstan's path to the status of IT centre

Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov also addressed the participants of the marathon in Innopolis. The head of the region reminded how the development of the IT infrastructure in the republic began, when due to the large volumes of paper documents it was decided to transfer the work of ministries and departments to electronic format.

“Everything started with us somewhere in 2007, when I was working as prime minister. We felt that a huge number of documents should be systematised. Where are they, how do they walk, how does it all work? It was decided that all the authorities in the republic should work in one system in electronic form.”

The leader of Tatarstan noted that the republic has managed to go a long way from a region where there were not enough computer science teachers to one of the leading IT centres in the country.

“We understood where we were going, what we were doing. This required large investments from us. We provided all teachers with laptops, made a schedule, everything that is necessary. Today we can say that all schools in Tatarstan are provided with optical fiber, even all rural ones.”

Rustam Minnikhanov stressed that special attention is directed to schools focused on IT. The results of the Unified State Exam in computer science from schoolchildren of Tatarstan once again confirm the effectiveness of the training system. Among the major projects implemented in the region, he singled out the IT parks in Kazan and Naberezhnye Chelny and, of course, the high-tech city of Innopolis itself.

Life in the city of the future

The mayor of Innopolis, Ruslan Shagaleev, noted that the city is developing intensively, now there are more than 245 IT companies operating on its territory.

Everyday issues are solved through the Telegram messenger. With the population of Innopolis of 5,000 people, the city administration has created more than 200 chats and channels through which residents can quickly report problems that arise.

“We believe that the KPI of the city administration is measured by the level of happiness of its residents. We periodically conduct surveys, measuring the level of happiness of its residents," the head of the city of high technologies noted and added that, according to the results of the survey, Innopolis is one of the happiest cities in the country, the level of happiness of its residents today is 85,6%.

Deputy Prime Minister of Tatarstan Roman Shaykhutdinov reported on the high level of knowledge of applicants entering Innopolis University: “Innopolis University ranks third in the Russian Federation in terms of the quality of admission.”

Roman Shaykhutdinov shared his opinion that the success of this approach is based on the quality of the teaching staff, on a powerful material and technical base, and on attracting large companies to educational programmes, where graduates will later have an opportunity to find a job.

“We try to attract such companies that would be interesting to our students and graduates of the leading universities of our country," Shaykhutdinov stressed.

Dmitry Moskvin, Associate Professor at the Institute of Cybersecurity and Information Protection of the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, touched upon security issues in the city of the future. After all, the more technologies are used in the “smart city”, the more vulnerable it will be. At the same time, “smart” security should be convenient for citizens:

“Cybersecurity was initially perceived by many as a trailer car, as an overhead. But now everyone understands that cybersecurity is actually turning into the locomotive of progress. And before implementing systems, we need to think about how we will protect them.”

Dmitry Moskvin also drew attention to that along with the development of technologies, we should not forget about the moral side of progress. “People, not machines, should be responsible for decisions that affect the fate of other people," the specialist stressed.

Gleb Diakonov, the consulting director at Ntechlab, spoke about the prospects for the development of facial recognition system. The speaker noted that during the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the system could count the number of people who came to the fan zones with an accuracy of 99,4%. This result gives the opportunity to use face recognition to produce video analytics. For example, using this method, we can optimize the urban transport system:

“We can watch how people move, starting from their home through a ground public transport stop, go down to the subway, show up at work. We can estimate some standard, we can estimate the time of their movement along this route. We can evaluate what we can do to improve the situation.”

The site of the II Federal Educational Marathon 'New Knowledge' in Innopolis is open from 1 to 3 September.