Russia's Digital Ministry expects big data bill to be passed this year - Shadayev

PERM. Oct 23 (Interfax) - Russia's Digital Development Ministry expects the bill to regulate the circulation of big data, which among other things calls for businesses to provide such data free of charge for the development of artificial intelligence technology, to be passed in the main reading this year, Digital Development and Communications Minister Maksut Shadayev said.

"We're responsible for the bill to get businesses' big data into circulation. The bill is in the final stage. I think that we'll consider it in the second reading in the fall session," Shadayev told reporters at the Robot Battle tournament on Saturday.

He said the state will require businesses to provide "data that is necessary for making decisions for governance and data needed for the development of AI technologies" free of charge in cases determined by the government.

"The bill calls for giving the government the authority to specify cases when businesses will provide big data free of charge to the state for the improvement of decision making and development of AI technologies," Shadayev said.

Big data are structured or unstructured data sets that are processed using specialized automated tools for use in statistics, analysis, forecasting and decision making.