The Ministry of Digital Development has developed proposals for its own digitalization: for the modernization of public services, etc. It is proposed to allocate more than 118 billion rubles from the budget. Of these, 19,4 billion rubles. it was proposed to invest in the purchase of 700 thousand tablets for doctors and teachers on the Russian operating system (OS) Aurora, as well as the development of applications for it. For now, it is the lack of software that is limiting the once large-scale plans to use Aurora in the public sector.
It turns out that the actual recipients of this money could be the Russian IT companies Aquarius and Bayterg, since so far they are the only ones producing Russian tablets at Aurora, clarifies another Kommersant source in the government. Aquarius declined to comment; Bayterg did not promptly respond to the request.
According to him, negotiations have already been held on this with the Taiwanese manufacturer MediaTek, which estimated the development of chipsets at $3 million. Another about 600 million rubles. will be required to create software for them.
General Director of Open Mobile Platforms (OMP; developing Aurora OS) Pavel Eiges told Kommersant that there are indeed plans to scale the project, but he is not aware of the possible purchase of chipsets. Rostelecom (owns 75% in OMP, the rest is owned by the owner of the UST group Grigory Berezkin and his partners) refused to comment on information about the possible purchase of chipsets, saying only that they plan to scale the project with an increase in the number of devices on the Aurora OS that will be supplied to law enforcement agencies, medical and educational organizations.
As Kommersant reported on April 16, 2020, Rostelecom had already spent about 7 billion rubles on the development of the OS, and starting in 2020, it estimated its annual costs at 2,3 billion rubles. The development of Aurora is impossible without a guaranteed government order and regulatory support, a source familiar with Rostelecom’s position said in April 2020. The first major government project to use devices running this OS should be the population census, which will take place in 2021. For this purpose, Rosstat has already supplied 360 thousand tablets to Aurora.
Source: linux.org.ru