FEATURES DIGITAL GOVERNMENT AND SECURITY LEGAL REGULATION IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA

Abstract

Digital reality is becoming an integral part of the modern world, in which there are new ways of interaction between individuals and the functioning of state institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the concepts of «digital state» and «digital citizen» as a kind of challenge not only to the state, but also to society itself, which necessitated clarification and legitimization of these concepts in the legal field of the Russian Federation. The article reveals the key features of the Russian practice of digital governance and security legal regulation. Based on an analysis of the existing legislative framework in the Russian Federation in the field of digitalization and digital security, and, in particular, such significant initiatives in recent years as the draft Concept «Ensuring the protection, rights and freedoms of man and citizen in the digital space», as well as relying on a significant amount of accumulated over decades of research on scientific knowledge on this topic and statistical data (Global Cybersecurity Index), the authors identify both the strengths and weaknesses of modern Russian digital law. So, if high-quality legal regulation of a strategic orientation was singled out as the main positive feature of domestic legislative practice in the context of digitalization, then the intersection and imposition of the norms of different branches of law, together with the lack of legal norms’ systematization, were identified as the central problem of modern Russian digital legislation. The final part of this article is a set of proposals and recommendations for improving the legislative regulation of digital governance and security. The authors propose to pay more attention to public authorities to control the implementation of cybersecurity policies, as well as legislate the distribution of powers and responsibilities among the relevant government agencies.