OVERVIEW OF THE IV INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCE

“INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AND LAW

(LEGAL INFORMATIZATION – 2012)”

The IV International scientific and practical conference “Information technologies and law (Legal informatization -2012)” organized by the National Center of Legal Information of the Republic of Belarus and UNESCO Chair in information technologies and law of the National Center of Legal Information of the Republic of Belarus was held on 1 November 2012 in the premises of the CIS Executive Committee.

The representatives of the Administration of the President of the Republic of Belarus, Constitutional Court of the Republic of Belarus, Supreme Economic Court of the Republic of Belarus, Secretariats of the House of Representatives and Council of the Republic of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus, National center of legislation and legal research of the Republic of Belarus, Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus, Ministry of culture of the Republic of Belarus, Republican labor arbitrage, other governmental bodies and organizations, public associations, organizations – distributors of the legal information, scientists, professors from the educational establishments assisted this international forum.

Foreign participants and representatives of the international organizations, who took part in the conference, included representatives of the Economic Court of the CIS, Secretariat of the EurAsEC Court, Scientific and Technical Center of Legal Information “Sistema” of the Federal Protection Service of the Russian Federation, Scientific Center of Legal Information at the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, Republican State Enterprise “Republican Center of Legal Information” of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Kazakhstan, as well as the specialists in the sphere of legal informatization from Russia and Kazakhstan.

Within the framework of the conference the following issues were discussed:

• priority directions of the development of the state policy of the Republic of Belarus in the sphere of legal informatization and improvement of the state system of legal information;
• current issues of the enhancement of the legislation in the sphere of the informatization, including legal informatization;
• prospects of the creation and implementation of innovative technologies in the sphere of legal informatization;
• legal aspects of dissemination and accessibility of the legal information;
• state and development of the legal informatization in the countries of the CIS and other foreign countries;
• current state and prospects of the development of the interstate exchange of legal information;
• applied aspects of the use of modern information technologies within the educational process.

The Deputy Head of the Administration of the President of the Republic of Belarus Valeriy Mitskevich addressed the conference participants with an opening speech, wishing fruitful work and stressing a special role of legal informatization as a guarantor of stable functioning of a social legal state. Valeriy Vatslavovich also expressed the confidence that the recommendations of the conference will provide a base for stipulating of the further enhancement of the national systems of legal information.

Urgency and necessity of discussions of the processes of the development of the legal informatization as an inalienable part of the information society was marked in the complementary address of the First Deputy President of the CIS Executive Committee – CIS Executive Secretary Vladimir Garkun.

In the course of the conference 16 plenary reports were presented.

The report of the Director of the National Center of Legal Information of the Republic of Belarus Andrei Gaev “NCLI as a subject of state policy in the sphere of legal informatization: results of 15-year activity” presented the information on widespread activity of the National Center of Legal Information of the Republic of Belarus as a subject of state policy in the sphere of legal informatization, on characteristics of informational and legal processes inherent to the state system of legal information, demonstrated their urgency within the context of the formation of the information society.

The following three reports treated different areas of implementation of the information technologies.

The Minister of Justice of the Republic of Belarus Oleg Slizhevskiy discussed the use of such technologies in the activity of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus when carrying out the functions and tasks imposed on the Ministry in accordance with its competence, as well as the prospects of further development in the mentioned area.

The First Deputy President of the Supreme Economic Court of the Republic of Belarus Vasiliy Demidovch informed the participants about the increase of the level of the informatization (computerization) of courts, enlargement of the application area of information and technological innovations, creation on their basis of modern and secure systems of collection, storing and analysis of judicial and other information, including the practice of holding the hearings with the use of video-conference-call technologies.

Educational process passed through substantial changes due to the fast development of the information technologies. The First Vice-Rector of the International University “MITSO” Andrey Kozik reported on the benefits and prospects of the distance education, enriching his speech with specific examples.

The report of the President of the CIS Economic Court Ludmila Kamenkova concerned the issues of the realization of the principle of publicity in the activity of the said court.

The associate professor of the Department of theory and history of the state and law of the Academy of Public Administration under the aegis of the President of the Republic of Belarus Olga Bakinovskaya spoke about main approaches to the formation of the idea of the information society in the Republic of Belarus as well as about a number of legal aspects of the right to access to the information and its organization guarantying.

The President of the National Commission of the Republic of Belarus on for UNESCO Vladimir Shchastny stressed the role of the mentioned international organization in the development of information and communication technologies.

The practice of maintaining registers in the system “Normative acts of the Russian Federation” in 2009-2012 was the focus of the presentation of the Deputy Director of the Scientific Center of Legal Information at the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation Sergey Korolev. According to his opinion the main directions of the development of federal and state registers must be the transfer towards the electronic system of maintaining such registers, integration with existing informational legal resources and wide application of the system of maintaining of the registers for the performance of state functions of state organs at all levels.

Raushan Zhantasova, Deputy Director of the Republican Center of Legal Information of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Kazakhstan, reported about the access to the national legislation of Kazakhstan.

The Deputy Head of the Departiment of the information law, informatics and mathematics of the Russian Legal Academy of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation Andrey Morozov presented the report “Directions of development of the legal informatization in accordance with the State program of the Russian Federation “Information society (2011-2020)”. The report offered detailed characteristics of the mentioned directions and also formulated conclusions about the prospecs for the development of legal informatization in Russia.

The Head of the Main Expert Legal Department of the Secretariat of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus Nataliya Karpovich analyzed the state of the information and technological supply of the legislative process as well as the measures on its optimization and enhancement considering the formation of the unified legal information area in the Republic of Belarus in her report “Information technologies in the legislative process”.

Elena Dolgopolova, Deputy Director of the National library of Belarus, made a comparative analysis of the activity of the public centers of legal information (PCLI) on the base of public libraries of the Republic of Belarus and Russian Federation. The reporter compared normative legal base of the creation of the network of PCLIs and dynamics of its development, resource support to PCLI, organization of the public service, main factors that influenced specifics of the establishment and organization of work of PCLIs in both countries.

The Director General of the LLC “UrSpektr” Oleg Slomenets spoke on the issues of state and prospects of the development of the dissemination of the legal information in an electronic form.

The Director of “Profigroup” Evgeniy Litvinenko, in his report “Dissemination of the legal information by means of Internet”, informed about the directions of the development of the information technologies in the sphere of dissemination of the legal information, presented the experience of the Republic of Belarus and Russian Federation in the area of accessibility of legal acts in the Internet, as well as on the benefits of publishing of the normative legal acts online in the Internet.

A new approach to the revision of law as an information and communication system was presented by the Deputy Head of the Deparment of theory and history of the state and law of the Law Faculty of the BSU Sergey Kalinin.

The conference has become a venue for holding a constructive and competent dialogue of all interested, its participants succeeded in exchanging experiences on the issues of the state and further development of the legal informatization in order to form information and legal space and ensuring an equal access to the legal information.

The main decisions, taken upon the results of the reports discussed, constituted the basis for of the Final Document adopted by the participants of the conference.