Moscow plans to create its own information system of depersonalized personal data for training AI, Forbes writes, citing a statement by Vladislav Shishmarev, Deputy Head of the Moscow Department of Information Technology (DIT).
According to the presentation prepared by the DIT, the future information system for the formation of regional data sets (IS FRSD) is designed to collect and depersonalize personal information of residents of the capital, which is processed by government agencies and subordinate organizations of the Moscow government. The operator of the system will be the DIT of Moscow. “The depersonalized data is supposed to be used to train AI algorithms; their use for other purposes is not envisaged,” the DIT explained.
According to the ai.mos.ru portal, there are currently about 100 projects using AI at various stages of implementation in the capital. The city has 25 data sets in areas such as e-government, construction, economics, culture and housing and communal services, which it is ready to share with developers of AI solutions. To get full access to these sets, it is enough to send an application with a description of the AI project in which they will be used.
After depersonalization, the data will be transferred to the “gosozero” of data, which is created by the Ministry of Digital Development, or used within the FRSD IS. They will be used by both government agencies and businesses for analytical purposes.
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A law passed in 2020 in Moscow introduced an experimental legal regime (ELR) to stimulate the development and testing of new AI-based services, under which companies participating in the experiment were given broad opportunities to use AI, including access to citizen data, including images from facial recognition cameras and anonymized personal data.
According to the law on the creation of “gosozer”, adopted in August 2024, a state information system (GIS) will be created, where companies must, upon request, transfer anonymized personal data of clients and employees free of charge. At the same time, the law makes an exception for Moscow due to the current EPR.
Experts believe that the usefulness of the creation of the capital’s data “lake” for business will depend on the conditions under which the data sets will be provided and whether it will be possible to use the results of their processing. At the moment, according to the law, nothing can be downloaded from the “state lake”, not even the results of information analysis. There are also concerns that even anonymized personal data can allow their owner to be identified.