Gradually, electronic money and documents are replacing paper money from people's lives. Among the government's plans, the biggest sensation was the news about the replacement of ordinary passports of all residents of Russia with cards with electronic chips.
The Federal Migration Service and the Ministry of Communications and Communications are developing a new project - the introduction of new generation general civil passports. This document will be a plastic card with a photograph, some data and an electronic chip with which it will be possible to "read" all information about the citizen.
Gradually, paper passports will completely disappear from the life of Russians, but this will not happen until 2018. It is by this time that it is planned to provide all residents of Russia with electronic documents.
The new passport will replace most of the documents that exist today for citizens: a health insurance policy, a driver's and pensioner's license, an insurance certificate. Electronic technologies will penetrate almost all spheres of human life and unify this part of the infrastructure as much as possible. The provision of public services will not depend on certain departments, will become extraterritorial, that is, it will operate throughout Russia.
The project for the issuance of electronic passports will be linked to the project of the Universal Electronic Card (UEC). Initially, it was planned that the UEC would become an additional identity card for citizens and replace some documents: a pension certificate, a transport pass, a registration certificate, a compulsory medical insurance policy, a driver's license and a bank card.
Universal electronic cards were supposed to appear in the hands of citizens already in 2012, but their issue was postponed for a year, their issuance at the request of citizens is planned only from the beginning of 2013. So far, no decision has been made that the card will be "equated" with a passport. Many regions, as the head of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications stated, do not have funds for the introduction of an electronic card, so the project can be transferred to the federal level.
