Nikolay Anatolyevich Nikiforov (russian: Никола́й Анато́льевич Ники́форов; born 24 June 1982) is a Russian politician. In 2012, he became
Minister of Communications and Mass Media of Russia.
Career
At age 19, Nikiforov became deputy director of the
Kazan Portal company. From 2006 to 2010, he headed the Center of Information Technology of
Tatarstan. In 2010, Nikiforov became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Information and Communication of the Tatarstan Republic.
On 21 May 2012, at the age of 29, he was named as the
Minister of Communications and Mass Media in
Dmitry Medvedev's Cabinet Dmitry Medvedev's Cabinet may refer to:
* Dmitry Medvedev's First Cabinet, the Russian government led by Dmitry Medvedev from 2012 to 2018
* Dmitry Medvedev's Second Cabinet
Dmitry Medvedev's Second Cabinet was the composition of the Russian ...
, thus becoming its youngest member.
In October 2012, Nikiforov criticized Russia's leading telecom operation,
Rostelecom for failing to address "digital inequality" in the country. Nikiforov singled out Rostelecom's investment strategy, which has primarily focused on expanding its market share by acquiring other companies, as inadequate. This, Nikiforov said, means the company's energies are focused on areas that are already connected to the internet, rather than acting to expand internet access.
He pursued the modernization of the
Russian Post, saying that modernization of the Russian Post will make it possible to deliver mail inside the country within a week. Nikiforov said the purpose of the Ministry of Communications is to ensure that all mail should be delivered within the boundaries of one large city of community within one day and that he sees several instruments of financing the postal service’s upgrade program, such as the issue of
infrastructure
Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...
bonds, a rise in the prices of some services, the introduction of differentiated fees for the delivery of
pension
A pension (, from Latin ''pensiō'', "payment") is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments ...
s (depending on the
region) and the introduction of
tax breaks. Since 27 December 2017, he is on the supervisory board of
Post Bank.
Nikiforov was responsible for the transition away from
Apple iOS products towards
Samsung Android
Android may refer to:
Science and technology
* Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human
* Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system
** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
products for use as government IT tools sometime between 2010 and March 2014, when it was first noticed by journalists at a cabinet meeting. He was quoted by
AFP as saying "American special services … will significantly increase the volume of information they intercept (which) of course causes serious concern to many governmental clients. This obviously orientates Russian clients, primarily state ones, to be very choosy about their partners in IT."
Accusations of academic dishonesty
In 2011, Nikiforov defended his thesis in Economics. According to an examination by
Dissernet, this doctoral thesis contains at least 97 pages with undocumented plagiarism from six other works and data fabrication. On 22 June 2016, the dissertation council of the
Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration confirmed the existence of plagiarism in Nikiforov's thesis, but refused to recommend stripping Nikiforov of his degree.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nikiforov, Nikolay
1982 births
Living people
21st-century Russian politicians
Government ministers of Russia
Kazan Federal University alumni
Politicians from Kazan
People involved in plagiarism controversies
Russian economists
United Russia politicians