Public Power on the Internet

Abstract

State and municipal bodies use actively the Internet to implement tasks. The paper studies various aspects of the presence of public power on the Internet, execution of state functions in digital environment, in particular securing openness of public power, providing electronic state and municipal services, their outsourcing and accompanying issues of information security including scraper sites and identification when rendering state and municipal services electronically. Besides, the requirement of the openness of public power covers other state bodies and the structures performing public functions and the officials. Non-state structures may also satisfy publicly relevant interests primarily when outsourcing some functions of state and municipal bodies. Hence, these structures should maintain a level of information openness equal to state and municipal bodies including the provision of information. Some public functions are transmitted by the state in particular to self-regulated organizations. Hence, the question arises on securing their information openness. The information openness principle applied to self-governing organizations should be a principle for any self-regulated organizations, which is why the changes have touched upon other federal laws providing for the activity of such organizations. The requirement of open activity are not limited to self-regulated organizations. A number of the Russian Federation constituent entities have adopted similar laws and rules targeting legal security of free access to information on the providers of social services, the services, terms, order, conditions, tariffs on the services in mass media and Internet official websites.