Gradually, electronic money and documents crowd out paper money from people's lives. Among the government’s plans, the news about the replacement of ordinary passports of all residents of Russia with cards with electronic chips caused the most sensation.
The Federal Migration Service and the Ministry of Communications and Communications are developing a new project - the introduction of a new generation of civil passports. This document will be a plastic card with a photograph, some data and an electronic chip, with which you can "read" all the 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 citizens with most of the documents existing today: medical insurance policy, driver's and pension certificate, insurance certificate. Electronic technologies 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, it will become extraterritorial, that is, it will operate throughout Russia.
The project of issuing electronic passports will be linked to the draft Universal Electronic Card (UEC). Initially, it was planned that UEC will become an additional identity card for citizens and will replace some documents: a pension certificate, a travel card, a certificate of registration, 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 release was postponed for a year, their issuance according to citizens' applications is planned only from the beginning of 2013. So far, no decision has been made that the card will be "equated" with the passport. Many regions, as stated by the head of the Ministry of Communications, have no funds to implement an electronic card, so the project can be transferred to the federal level.
