Gosuslugi, Russia's system of government digital services, will undergo a comprehensive transformation aimed at making it user-friendlier, while maintaining the “single window” approach, which made it very popular among Russians.

After the update, a time frame for which has not yet been announced, users will not have to search for each service separately, as they will be grouped by specific needs, such as retirement, starting a business or registering a child's birth, Dmitry Grigorenko, Deputy Prime Minister, told the Russian daily Vedomosti last year.

“Every service should be convenient and fast,” Grigorenko added.

According to Grigorenko, each service will have a curator who will be responsible for its quality and development. Their responsibilities will include working with feedback from citizens, troubleshooting, and monitoring the correctness of service delivery.

Meanwhile, Gosuslugi keeps adding extra digital services. Recently, it added an option of tracking data on taxi services. Now, Russians can check information about taxis, Russia's ministry of digital development, communications and mass media, which is in charge of Gosuslugi, announced on January 13.

To do this, a user will need to scan a QR code placed in each taxi with their Gosuslugi app, to check if the taxi is a legitimate and properly licenced operator.

This check option will help to improve road safety and reduce the number of illegal taxies, the ministry said.

A major chapter in digitisation story 

Gosuslugi, launched in late 2009, has been a success story in the digital transformation of Russian state services. Before the introduction of Gosuslugi, getting state or municipal services in Russia was a huge problem.

Any interaction with government agencies in Russia inevitably meant dealing with excessive paperwork. To obtain a certificate, apply for benefits or make a doctor's appointment, Russians had to wait in line for hours, and the process of submitting documents took weeks. With the launch of the Gosuslugi portal in December 2009, the situation changed dramatically. Today, a person can file documents or pay for government services in just a few clicks without leaving home. More recently, many have taken advantage of Gosuslugi's mobile app.

Speaking at the Tadviser Summit in May 2024, minister of digital development Maksut Shadayev noted that the processing time for interdepartmental requests required to provide services through the Gosuslugi portal is still five days.

“But in fact, in the most progressive departments, we are now talking about seconds, minutes, hours," he said. "In my opinion, nowhere does it take more than a day. 80% of requests are processed in a few hours at most. Our task is to ensure that they are processed online.”

Digital government services are available in several countries, such as the Singpass portal in Singapore, which allows users not only to receive government services, manage personal finances or make doctor's appointments, or digital government service platforms in Estonia and Denmark.

However, Gosuslugi differs from its foreign counterparts in that it offers a “single window” for all services, navigation via an assistant, and the extensive digitisation of the process of providing public services on the part of the authorities themselves, which allows more and more services to be provided proactively and online, Lyudmila Bogatyreva, head of the IT department at the Polilog agency, was quoted as saying by Russian business daily Vedomosti.

The introduction of neural networks and AI into the service delivery process is one of the key growth points for the entire system, Bogatyreva said, adding that further improvements to Gosuslugi could include eliminating digital inequality in the provision of regional public services through the use of unified approaches and e-government infrastructure.

More money for digitisation

Over the last decade or so, Russia has placed a special emphasis on the digitisation of government services, providing substantial cash to digitisation programmes - something that Gosuslugi also benefited from.

The Digital Economy national program, which ran from 2019 to 2024, was succeeded by the federal project Digital Public Administration. Its ambitious aim is to increase the share of mass socially significant services available in electronic form to 95% by 2030. The budget for the federal project for the five-year period was originally set at RUB411bn (€4.5bn). But, as Vedomosti reported, even a larger amount, RUB1.5 trillion (€16.4bn), had been allocated for the implementation of the project.

As part of the national project “Data Economy,” which started in 2025, further development of digital infrastructure, improvement of personal data protection and ensuring uninterrupted service are planned, the Russian government said.

There are plans to implement a system whereby state information systems automatically record changes in citizens' data and, based on this information, provide the necessary services even before the person submits an application.

Impressive numbers

Since its launch in 2009, Gosuslugi has developed into a comprehensive ecosystem where more than 1,600 state and municipal services are available to citizens, legal entities and individual entrepreneurs. The number of registered users is over 112mn, with about 2mn applications for various state services submitted on a daily basis, according to the the ministry of digital development, communications and mass media 

In 2024, more than 660mn applications were submitted through the portal, and 154mn payments were made. Since the service was launched, users have taken out almost 60mn compulsory medical insurance policies, made more than 180mn doctor's appointments, and submitted more than 2.3mn marriage registration applications.

An alternative to foreign messaging services

Meanwhile, Russian authorities are increasingly attempting to turn Gosuslugi into a distribution channel for Max, a Russian-developed messaging app positioned as a domestic alternative to WhatsApp and Telegram. The effort fits into a broader push to reduce reliance on foreign digital services since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the years since, officials have repeatedly urged citizens to move away from platforms linked to companies from so-called “unfriendly” countries.

WhatsApp, for example, is owned by Meta, whose services are officially banned in Russia, while Telegram occupies a more ambiguous position. Although Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov was born in Russia, his relationship with the authorities has long been uneasy, marked by past conflicts over data access and content moderation. Against this backdrop, Max is being promoted as a safer, more controllable alternative, aligned with state priorities.

So far, however, adoption has been slow. Most Russians have shown little enthusiasm for switching from familiar messengers that already dominate daily communication. Officials appear to recognise this inertia, which may explain why Gosuslugi is now being used as a lever to drive uptake. Rather than competing on features alone, Max is being woven directly into services many citizens already depend on.

In late 2025, Max announced that users could view key documents from Gosuslugi directly within the app. Electronic versions of passports, driver’s licenses, SNILS numbers, compulsory medical insurance policies, and taxpayer identification numbers are now accessible through a “Digital ID” section, without requiring biometric identification. This integration allows users to retrieve sensitive documents without opening Gosuslugi itself.

Max has also introduced direct notifications from Gosuslugi inside the messenger. A built-in chatbot sends alerts about doctor’s appointments, application statuses, and fines. Users can pay fines immediately within the chat, with payment confirmations displayed in the same interface. By embedding government functions into everyday messaging, authorities appear to be betting that convenience - rather than persuasion - will gradually pull users toward the Russia-made app.