OREANDA-NEWS. March 04, 2008.  The Ministry for Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation has launched http://www.economy.gov.ru/, the new version of the ministry’s web portal and a major Russian resource on economic issues, produced with IBS support. The project provided the new design, upgraded the portal content structure, expanded the portal functionality and introduced a number of new interactive services, reported the press-centre of IBS.

The web portal of the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation was first launched in 2004 jointly with IBM and IBS and has since become one of the most informative and demanded web resources on economic and trade issues. Over the past four years the amount of documents presented on the web portal has increased manifold, which required improvements in performance, information security, ease of navigation and search for portal users.

A wide range of materials, subjects and sections in the new version is designed to serve all information needs of individuals, members of the business community, potential investors and other stakeholders. A new content structure, an intuitive interface, and document filtering and selection tools make navigation and searching easier and faster. A number of focused resources have been produced as part of the portal to structure and consolidate issue-related content on the most important and hot topics.

Interactive tools of the web portal include services that provide fast user feedback, tracking of the latest changes and published materials. A new resource on entering civil service with the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation has been built. It provides interactive tools to learn about current job opportunities, view detailed job offer descriptions and access regulatory documents. E-document forms can be downloaded and the current status of a specific job offer tracked.

“First and foremost, all changes implemented in the new version have been designed to make our communication with companies, institutions and members of the public more efficient, and improve access to information on major issues of economic development of this country and on activities of the Ministry. I am confident that every user will note positive changes and that the web portal has become more comfortable and user-friendly”, said Alla Borisenkova, Assistant Minister and Spokeswoman for the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation.

It is not just the way the web portal looks that was changed. The upgrade included transition to the new version of the IBM Web Sphere Portal 6.0.1 software platform and the IBM Web Content Management 6.0.1 system. The web portal transition was carried out from September till December 2007.

At the same time, the upgrade involved the internal departmental portal of the Ministry, which is intended for Ministry employees and also runs on the IBM Web Sphere Portal platform. A new design, revised content structure and some other functional innovations make this portal a more convenient tool for professional use.

A visiting statistics system has been implemented on the upgraded platform of the portals; it includes capability for analyzing resource visits by using various cuts and groupings of data. The project also provided some new architecture and software solutions that improve, among other things, information security of the portals. In addition, a unified information preparation and publishing system has been implemented at the internal and external portals to facilitate the publishing process substantially and rule out duplicated content loading work.

“The portal resources of the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation, both external for web users and internal for Ministry employees, are developed concurrently as they rely on the common platform and are closely inter-related. For both resources the upgrade project fulfilled similar objectives of making them more useful, convenient and function-rich”, commented Alexander Pronin, Deputy Director of the Administration and General Services Department, Ministry for Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation.

“The Ministry pays a great deal of attention to development of portal systems because such systems help structure and provide access to large amounts of data handled by employees in their daily work. It is also important to make some of that information available to members of the public. This is achieved by using the most advanced portal platform, which enables close integration of the external and internal portals on the system and information levels. This facilitates operation substantially and makes the portal itself a really easy-to-use and efficient information tool”, noted Alexander Gorban, the Project Manager from IBS.