The SMS conference with local authority, Anatoly Smirnov, took place on January 22nd in the Prefecture of Zelenograd, an administrative district of Moscow known as “the Russian Silicon Valley”. Thanks to Zed’s technical support Smirnov answered the questions received via SMS from Zelenogradians.

From November 17th to December 17th, 2008, the citizens sent SMS messages with appeals and questions to the Prefect, Anatoly Smirnov. The new communication channel allowed processing messages concerning public services, development, infrastructures and the social sphere of the city. On January 22nd Anatoly Smirnov personally answered every message. The SMS conference was live broadcasted on “www.zelao.ru”, in presence of local journalists.

Furthermore, the first public mobile services websites (“zelao.mobi” and “wap.zelao.mobi”) were recently released. “Mobile district”, is a project that combines mobile products and services where WEB and WAP interfaces interact. Thus, a unique G2C tool.

After the event, the Prefect of Zelenograd’s answers were published on the “www.zelao.ru” and “zelao.mobi” sites and on the newspaper “41”. Short replies were sent to the authors of the questions via SMS. Besides, two of them were awarded for the most interesting questions about the current situation.

Maxim Kanevskiy, Zed Russia B2G Manager, commented that after Zed’s federal project “Dialogue with Vladimir Putin” Russia has been engulfed by a wave of direct lines with regional authorities. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the authorities start to use SMS messages in this type of communication more actively”, said Kanevskiy.