Dr. Hab., Professor L.A. Rapoport¹
PhD, Associate Professor S.V. Tomilova¹
PhD, Associate Professor Y.V. Engin^1
1 Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg

Keywords: physical education and sports, digitalization, Sverdlovsk Oblast, smart industry, digital technologies, information technologies, Smart Region Project.

Background. Progress of the modern civilization is largely due to the rapidly developing technologies on the whole and digital technologies in particular, making their way into every life domain. The digitalization process may be defined as the efforts to “create, in every economic tier, the relevant information technologies and digital platforms and operators … to solve every business problem and attain the strategic policy goals in the health service, science, education, transport development projects, new industrialization initiatives, governmental economic control, management and planning domains etc." [4, p. 139]. Such digitalization technologies may lay a sound foundation for radical transformations in every economic sector, and this fact is verified by the special attention to them from the relevant governmental agencies. Thus, President V.V. Putin in his address to the plenary meeting of the International Congress on Cyber Security held in Moscow on July 5-6, 2018, mentioned digitalization as “the serious resource for the national progress to secure real improvements in the people's lives” [1].

To encourage the digital economy development project in the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation came up with Decree No. 1632-r dated July 28, 2017 to approve the Digital Economy Program of the Russian Federation. One of the key goals of the latter is to “implement digital technologies and platform solutions in the public administration and communal service areas, with a special priority to the interests of the local communities, small and medium-size businesses, including individual ones”, and “transform the priority economic sectors and social domains including the health and educational systems, industry, agriculture, construction sector, urban economy, transport and energy infrastructure and financial services by special digital technologies with platform solutions” [2]. Since the physical education and sport sector development goals are ranked with the strategic national policy objectives [3], no wonder that the physical education and sport sector is not alien to the above policies and initiatives.

Objective of the study was to provide a theoretical basis for the digital technologies implementation in the regional physical education and sport serivce system.

Methods and structure of the study. We used for the purposes of the Smart Region Project design a variety of analytical and synthesizing methods (in compliance with the relevant standards and regulatory requirements) plus brainstorming sessions. The project was governed by the following: Presidential Decree No. 204 of May 7, 2018 "On national goals and strategic objectives of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2024"; “Information society progress strategy of the Russian Federation for the period of 2017-2030” approved by Presidential Decree No. 203 of May 9, 2017; “Scientific and technological development strategy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2035” approved by Presidential Decree No. 642 of December 1, 2016; Minutes of the Sverdlovsk Oblast Governor’s Council session on the priority strategic Sverdlovsk Oblast projects dated 05.08.2018 No. 9-ЕК, clause 5, section III; and the “Sverdlovsk Oblast information society development program for the period up to 2024” approved by the Sverdlovsk Oblast Government Resolution dated December 29, 2017 No. 1050-PP. The Smart Region Project was designed pursuant to the Sverdlovsk Oblast Governor Decree dated October 31, 2017 No. 546-UG “On the Five Year Sverdlovsk Oblast Development Plan for the period of 2017-2021” on the whole and its “Human resource protection and development” section in particular.

Results and discussion. The Smart Region Project is geared to attain the following long-term strategic progress goals of the Sverdlovsk Oblast: growth of the local population; improved living standards with comfortable living conditions and self-fulfillment opportunities for every population group, to facilitate everybody’s talents being realized; and the regional  economy competitiveness spurring initiatives. These ambitious goals in the regional physical education and sport sector will be attained by systematic efforts to offer and expand new services and solutions based on the cutting-edge digital technologies including smart services in the following three domains: (1) physical education and mass sports; (2) physical education and sport infrastructure improvement projects; and (3) children and youth sports and elite sports promotion in the region. The smart physical education and sport services under the Smart Region Project within the Smart Region Progress Concept will evolve in the following functional/ technological domains:

Smart Lifestyle domain of the physical education and sport service sector designed to: (1) Provide ready access to a database of regional sports facilities and organizations with the current price lists for the physical education and sport services; (2) Inform people on the regional physical education and sport services, events and operations including the health services and tests; (3) Refer requests for the physical education and sport services to the relevant physical education and sport agencies and service organizations; (4) Establish a physical education and sport information portal for staffing the physical education and sport industry with qualified human resource; (5) Establish a comprehensive rehabilitation/ habilitation portal for people with disabilities; (6) Offer news flow and event calendars with a special public promotion service to attract people to the physical education and sport / health events and projects; and (7) Audit, on an independent basis, quality of the physical education and sport services and relevant social support provided by the relevant organizations.

Smart People domain designed to: (1) Offer a physical education and sport information portal to help people design and manage their own physical education and sport / sport training programs with the individual progress trajectories, based on the internationally accepted, theoretically grounded and practically tested methods; and (2) Establish and educational information portal for the human resource inflow and staffing needs of the physical education and sport sector.

Smart Management domain to: (1) Create a unified electronic document processing system for the regional and municipal executive authorities and their reporting physical education and sport service organizations; (2) Automate the reporting system; (3) Automate progress analyses of the physical education and sport service sector using the “cross-cutting” benchmarks to keep informed the Ministry of physical education and sport, its subordinate organizations and Sverdlovsk Oblast municipalities with a special priority to the “red zones” (bottlenecks) and the relevant solutions based on SWOT and BI analyses, to ensure the physical education and sport industry progress statistics being compliant with the regional socio-economic development policies; and

Smart Environment domain geared to: (1) Establish a unified automated system to rate the sports assets management efficiency with consideration for the actual service capacities of the sports facilities and capacities of the relevant regional and municipal physical education service agencies and their subordinate organizations; and (2) Give a classified access to the physical education and sport service databases including the physical education and sport business databases to lure investments in the sector.

The Smart Region Project will be directly implemented by 88 GTO Complex Test Centers available in every Sverdlovsk Oblast municipality. It should be mentioned that presently these Centers use a computerized GTO information system viewed as a component of the federal physical education and sport industry digitalization project. Furthermore, pursuant to the Presidential Commission Pr-1121 Clause 2 dated 06.11.2017, the GTO Complex Test Centers will contribute to the physical education and sport sector information technologies development projects by providing their information on the corporate and individual entities offering and interested in the physical education and sport services. These operations will help meet the federal policy requirements for the sport reserve training for the national sport teams pursuant to the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation Order No. 999 dated 10.30.2015.

Conclusion. The Smart Region Project experience accumulated by the Sverdlovsk Oblast may be highly beneficial if rolled out to the other regions of the Russian Federation to help attain the following national progress goals for the period up to 2024: sustainable population growth; growth in the life expectancy by 78 years by 2024 and 80 years by 2030; fast digital technologies implementation in the national economy and social sphere to attain the progress benchmarks set by the Digital Economy Program of the Russian Federation including those set by its Human Resources and Education, Information Infrastructure and Information Security sections. These actions will help the Smart Region Project to meet the new progress avenues defining criteria and, hence, qualify for the Federal Program supported initiatives.

References

1. Plenary meeting of International Congress on Cybersecurity [electronic resource] Available at: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57957
2. Order of the Government of the Russian Federation of July 28, 2017 No. 1632-r “On approval of the program“ Digital Economy of the Russian Federation ”[electronic resource] Available at: http://government.ru/docs/28653/
3. Decree of the President of Russia dated May 7, 2018 No. 204 “On National Goals and Strategic Tasks of the Development of the Russian Federation for the Period until 2024”[electronic resource] Available at: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57425
4. Yudina T.N. Digitalization as trend of modern development of Russian economy: pros and cons. State and municipal management. Uchenye zapiski SKAGS. 2017. No. 3. pp. 139-143.

Corresponding author: rla66@mail.ru

Abstract

Objective of the study was to provide a theoretical basis for the digital technologies implementation in the regional physical education and sport serivce system.

Methods and structure of the study. When developing the project, the authors used the following general scientific methods: analysis, synthesis, and comparison. The project was initiated upon inclusion of the Sverdlovsk region in the number of experimental sites that ensure the involvement of focus groups in regular physical education and sports activities under the "Sport as Life Norm" federal project.

Results and discussion. The "Sports Leader" project was designed to train not only sports leaders but also mentors. One of the fundamental principles of this project is individualization of the training process - the development of an individual trajectory for training of sports leaders with due regard to students' talents.

The project proposes the use of a mentoring system with the participation of instructors from among trainers-instructors and (or) specialists of the GTO Complex test centers. Two educational programs are planned to be implemented: for students and for mentors. The project implementation should lead to an increase in the share of citizens leading a healthy way of life and regularly engaged in physical education and sports activities, prevention of destructive behavior of adolescents, strengthening of the family institution and popularization of family values, expansion of opportunities for the use of active forms of leisure for the population.

The authors conclude that, despite the fact that this project was initiated within the framework of development of the physical culture and sports sector, the underlying potential enables to solve a set of social tasks. And in case of successful testing of the proposed methods, this project can be used not only in the Sverdlovsk region, but also in the entire Russian Federation.