Russia can become the world's leader in developing and using an e-government system in the country within the next five years, country's leading long-distance telephony provider Rostelecom Vice President Alexei Nashchekin said.

In the world development rating released by the United Nations, Russia ranks 27th, rising 32 steps in two years. Korea tops the list.

Rostelecom is responsible for the e-government system in Russia and will have to ensure that the country makes it to the top 20 countries in this list in the next several years, Nashchekin said at the "E-government" forum on Wednesday, May 16.

"Actually, we have to set ourselves a more ambitious goal. The pace we have assumed allows us to become a leader in the next five years," he said.

Nashchekin noted that Russia has competitive advantages in this respect. "We have new technologies, the best experts in this field. Becoming a recognised leader in the world is a realistic task," the official said.

He recalled that Korea needed 30 years to create its e-government, but Russia has done it within two years.

According to Nashchekin, the inter-agency electronic interaction system handles three million transactions a day, and the portal of public services provides dozens of electronic services and accepts payments.

The Russian government earlier named Rostelecom the only entity responsible for certain measures under the Information Society programme in 2011-2012.

The list of measures includes 17 tasks. Rostelecom will have to develop the unified portal of public and municipal services, work out mechanisms allowing the use of mobile devices for accessing e-government services, develop services for interaction between citizens and the authorities through e-mail, developing telephone service centres, creating a continuous digital signature trust space.

Rostelecom will also develop inter-agency electronic communication, form and develop infrastructure for the universal electronic card, create a unified system for civil status registration records, develop the public automatic system "Management", develop the e-region programme, build infrastructure for electronic payments for public services, etc.

The Ministry of Mass Communications has drafted an e-government project for regions that should set "a common vector" for the development of e-government in the country.

The federal target e-government programme, previously called e-Russia, was launched back in 2002. It was designed to take the country to a new level of information technologies.

The strategy for the development of information society was adopted in 2008.