Interfax announces the launch of Universities Program "Digital Technologies for Education and Science"

The program’s first participant is the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA).

The Interfax Group and Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) have signed an agreement to integrate Interfax's IT systems into the Academy's training and research.

RANEPA will be the first higher educational institute to integrate data from SPARK-Interfax into its own information system as part of Interfax's Universities Program "Digital Technologies for Education and Science." Connecting the Academy's media library to the SPARK Application Programming Interface will provide RANEPA teaching staff and students with fundamentally new Big Data opportunities.

Academy staff will have access to SPARK's archive going back more than 15 years and containing information about all businesses in Russia and some CIS countries. The data are aggregated from more than 100 sources, including company reports, tenders and intellectual property.

"We hope our partnership with RANEPA will give students and academic staff new opportunities to fulfill their scientific potential, enrich their knowledge and enable them to acquire skills for working with Big Data that are valuable for a successful career," said Interfax CEO Mikhail Komissar.

"The agreement between RANEPA and Interfax is a natural development of our long-term collaboration. Big Data tools will open up new research opportunities for our students and staff," said Vladimir Mau, the Academy's Rector.

RANEPA is the largest educational institution in Russia, with 54 branches in 47 regions of eight federal districts of the Russian Federation. More than 180,000 people are being trained at RANEPA across Russia. Over one-third of all Master of Business Administration (MBA) students in the Russian Federation are students of the Academy. The Academy has developed unique training programs to train civil servants for federal authorities and regional governments. RANEPA is the sole contractor for the program of training and retraining the top-level managerial personnel reserve.

Over the past 30 years, the Interfax Group has been developing information and analytical systems to analyze the business activity of companies, to manage credit and tax risks, conduct media monitoring and to learn how to work with Big Data. Applying these skills and knowledge for the development of education and science is an important aspect of a company's social responsibility.

Interfax works closely with leading Russian higher educational institutes and helps them to integrate unique databases and IT solutions into the educational process in order to train professionals with essential practical skills that are highly sought after on the labor market.