The ministry is aiming to trim down the registry of domestic software, and remove about 1000 applications from it that do not comply with current requirements. The first audit of the register’s six-year history is being conducted at the moment. However, it must be done annually by the Government.

Close to an annual audit of the registry

Russian Ministry of Digital Industry has established a deadline for the cleaning up of the Russian Software Register. According to Izvestia the ministry will announce the list of programs that must be removed from the registry no later than November 7, 2021.

The next in-person meeting of experts will discuss the removal of inappropriate programs from register of Ministry of Digital Science. It can be held until November 2021, according to the publication. Izvestia writes that although the names of the programs and candidates have not yet been released, their owners still have the option to bring them into full compliance with the current conditions.

Notable is the fact that the Decree of the Government of Russia No. The Decree of the Government of Russia No. 1236 (2015) states that the audit of this register should be done annually. But this is not the first time that the register has been audited in six years. CNews asked the representatives of Ministry of Digital Affairs why they refused to audit the register in previous years. They replied, “This is the largest audit of the register. Less global checks were done earlier.”

Why are they being removed from the registry?

Programs that have copyright holders are at risk of being deleted from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. It could also affect software that does NOT meet the current requirements for inclusion into the register.

The annual cleaning of the domestic software register will be an annual event

This will include an assessment of software data and the developers. The Ministry of Digital Science will also check another important parameter. It is imperative that the Russian government or citizen of Russia manage the company responsible for the creation of a program in the registry. The developer must also have the exclusive rights to the software and its components. Additionally, the applications must be sold freely in Russia.

What are the benefits of a check?

CNews reported it was the first time that the Register of Domestic Software had been checked. CNews interviewed the deputy head of Ministry of Digital Science. Maxim Parshin… “We plan to conduct an additional analysis of all products included in the register by the end of 2021. Next, we will inform the copyright holders of products that do not meet the updated requirements, so that the products are finalized, otherwise they will be excluded from the register, ”he said.

Parshin says that the reason to check the composition of this register is not just because it has become more popular among developers due to the VAT benefits. The revised rules for filling in the register are the context of the revision.

The registry’s expert council and the Ministry of Digital Affairs are now able to initiate exclusions of products from the registry. “Before that, there were certain legal gaps, there were no formal grounds for excluding a product from the register,” said Maxim Parshin.

A change has also been made to the process for being added to the register, effective July 1, 2021. A new registry site was also launched at the end March 2021.

There are hundreds of candidates

Soon, the sixth anniversary of the Russian software register will be celebrated. It was created on January 1, 2016 and has since been used to add nearly 11.9 000 software products. Nearly 3800 copyright owners are currently registered in the register. Comparatively, the register had around 11.3 000 entries as of September 1, 2021.

Experts from the Ministry of Digital Science have been examining the relevancy of the data in the Russian software register over the past few months. At the beginning November 2021, 900 programs had been identified. The information was not current.

The Registry is growing at an accelerating pace.

All of them could end up outside the registry. The experts who carried out the verification could not contact the 104 copyright holders because they were not listed in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.

The import substitution policy is directly connected to the register of domestic software. Decree of Russia No. Decree of the Russian Government No. 1236 (2015) states that all national government agencies must give preference to software purchased from the register. Foreign software can only be purchased if there are no alternatives among domestic developments. Government agencies are often able to bypass this restriction.

1004 applications are at risk of being “flying out” of the registry. This is less than 10% from the total software in the registry. CNews reported in September 2021 that about 30% of these programs could exist according to a source from the Ministry of Digital Science’s expert council.