IT and Society: Webcasting equipment to support socially significant projects

During the meeting with journalists on March 5th 2012 the Minister of Communications and Mass Media Igor Shchegolev summed up tentative results concerning the work of the webcasting system at polling stations during the presidential election in Russia.

The Minister said that in a two-day period webvybory2012.ru portal which provided live webcasts from polling stations had some 1 billion visits. Maximum number of simultaneous views totaled 450 000 during the election and 270 000 views – during votes’ counting. On the average each registered user has viewed about 50 minutes of video.

The Minister announced that the system had operated with least number of failures. The developed webcasting system has become a peculiar social network, where people got registered and looked for their friends and classmates, Igor Shchegolev mentioned.

According to the Minister, the webcasting equipment will be generally dismantled until the public council decides how it can promote socially significant projects in future. After the election soft hardware systems are planned to be applied for state and educational needs. The Minister reminded that the competition for the best idea of post-election use of soft and hardware systems would continue in March.