Radiy Khabirov held meeting on Internet security

UFA, 24 January 2019. /Bashinform News Agency/ translated by Tatiana Aksyutina/.

A meeting was held at the House of the Republic on ensuring the security of citizens in the information sphere. It was held by Acting Head of Bashkortostan Radiy Khabirov; Alexander Zharov, the head of the Federal Supervision Agency for Information Technologies and Communications, representatives of relevant ministries and departments, law enforcement and supervisory bodies took part in it. Special attention was paid to the safety of children and schoolchildren. The head of the republic announced an Educational Forum to be held in Ufa on February 1-2.

“We plan to analyze the state of the educational environment, primarily in schools of our republic, and understand what we, the Government, municipalities, can do to ensure modern state of our education and, most importantly, comfortable studying conditions for our children”, said Radiy Khabirov.

According to the head of the republic, the issue of protecting children from the aggressive information environment is one of the key tasks. Appropriate educational and advisory work should be done to solve it”.

The Commissioner for Children's Rights in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Milana Skorobogatova, told in more detail about ensuring the information security of minor citizens of the republic. She listed the main information threats that children faced while using the Internet. This is primarily suicidal and other content containing hazards to health and life.

“It is impossible to protect our children from the growing Internet threats only by prohibitive measures”, Milana Skorobogatova noted. “It is necessary to organize a system of preventive measures aimed at improving the digital literacy of minors, their parents and specialists working with children. We should create special positive content for minors”.

The Interim Minister of Education RB Aibulat Khazhin said that in all schools filters were installed to block negative information that was not relevant to the educational process. Alexander Zharov named this practice as “unique”. Technical blocking of sites, if necessary, is also carried out in colleges. In November 2018, the Concept of Ensuring Children's Information Security was approved in Bashkortostan. A number of socially significant events has already been held. More than 280 thousand children took a single Internet safety lesson, over 53 thousand teenagers took part in a special quest for digital literacy. The Institute for the Development of Education RB has developed an additional general education program for students from the second to the eleventh grade, which has already been tested in several educational institutions of the republic in 2018.

In addition, in the 2018-2019 school year, at least 20% of teachers of the republic (about seven thousand people) must undergo refresher courses on child safety programs on the Internet.