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Vladimir Putin chaired a Supervisory Board meeting of the autonomous non-profit organisation Agency for Strategic Initiatives to Promote New Projects. ASI Director General Svetlana Chupsheva was the keynote speaker.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues.

By tradition, before the Supervisory Board meeting, we reviewed the agency’s performance and its new projects, which were very interesting, and I am here to confirm this.

I would like to thank everyone for the results, perseverance and courage, so to say, in advancing these undertakings. Most importantly, you are constantly building up your pace. Along with the experts and project leaders, you come up with effective and functional tools to promote these ideas and new initiatives that define the content, the logic of qualitative and breakthrough changes throughout the country. I strongly hope that what I saw today will be projected on the entire economy and the entire country.

Colleagues, I would like to emphasise that largely thanks to your efforts we have managed to launch important and significant processes. When teams – and these include startups, entrepreneurs, volunteers and simply energetic people – come together in close-knit communities of like-minded people, it always brings concrete and positive results. In order to jointly promote not just individual, but major system-wide projects, it is mandatory to be able to work as a team, to build these teams and work as teams.

I have no doubt that the 39^th Boiling Point, which the Agency opened here in the Commune House, and which, one might say, is an institution that is unique in terms of content, will become one such think tank. Today, we see think tanks like this developing across different industries.

I hope the agency will continue to participate, enthusiastically and substantively, in the creation and implementation of the broader agenda of Russia’s future – primarily in all the areas on which our technological sovereignty and, ultimately, the quality of people’s life depend.

The first thing I would like to point out is the development of new formats of education, of course. Today I carefully listened to the reports and looked through the printed materials and videos presented. All of that is definitely curious. I did not say anything, I commented on some things, but I noted a few things that undoubtedly attract attention. One of them is the mutual learning between AI systems and a human, when a person and an AI teach each other – that seemed to me like a transitional model of development in education, which could lead to completely unexpected and amazing results.

Seven years ago, ASI proposed joining WorldSkills. Participation in this international initiative, the victories of our team became an incentive for improving the entire personnel training system. Using the experience gained, we now need to develop advanced models of training in the professions of the future. We need to introduce lifelong learning formats for people of all ages. Some speakers talked about this today and it sounded very interesting, convincingly showing how effective work in this area can be. This is an extremely important area, considering the upcoming demographic changes and changes in the labour market.

The second point is creating an environment for breakthrough technological development. At a meeting with entrepreneurs, we spoke in detail about eliminating legal and other barriers for domestic companies and startups. As a result, instructions will be drawn up for government ministries and agencies. And I would like to repeat that this work should be carried out in direct contact with the Agency and those involved in the National Technology Initiative.

Third. I hope you remember that in my Address to the Federal Assembly this year I instructed ASI to launch, in cooperation with business associations, a special digital platform to allow entrepreneurs to report cases of pressure on their businesses. Now, proposals on what and how to do in this area have been submitted. This is not easy. I decided not to comment on it, either. I know how my colleagues reacted to some of these proposals. However, I would like to assure you that I will do everything I can for this proposed system to be introduced, whether in an improved version or in any functional form. I do not see any danger in it for law enforcement bodies. The only purpose is to make their work more efficient, to meet today’s needs and ensure the interests of society as a whole, both individual citizens and the business community in general.

Fourthly, we need to create conditions for developing the volunteer movement for the productive cooperation of the state, business and NGOs in the social area. This issue is extremely important for society and my colleagues are always interested in it. In part, we need to monitor compliance with the law on social entrepreneurship, which you will also take a direct part in drafting.

Relying on a new legislative foundation, it is necessary to launch social projects. I am referring, in part, to training and employment programmes for older people. I talked about this earlier. I am referring to the dissemination of experience of long-term caring for sick and elderly people, the development of career guidance and additional education for teenagers and the construction of modern facilities for children’s recreation.

Next. Support for community initiatives in cities and towns. I really liked one of the programmes presented here today, which I hope can make community improvement work, especially public landscaping and infrastructure, more efficient. This involves direct contact with local residents, which is an opportunity to understand and identify their needs and act on them, take them into account not just on paper, not for show, but in real life. I think this is extremely relevant. I ask the agency to propose new effective tools for direct and, very importantly, continuous feedback, interactive work with the people.

There is one more area of your activity that I would like to highlight. Under one of the projects, you are systematically collecting successful regional practices of socioeconomic development. The resulting extensive database, I just said this, a kind of library of management solutions is in many ways unique. Now we need to create a working mechanism for the dissemination of such practices throughout the country, also through the development of standards, a sort of methodological recommendations for the Russian regions. By the way, you have been doing similar work on the business climate and support for volunteer initiatives.

And of course, we need to promote our successful experience in implementing development projects at the global level. I talked about this at the St Petersburg Economic Forum this year, if you heard it. Moreover, there is a demand for effective management solutions from other countries and international organisations.

Let us discuss everything that you think we need to discuss today.

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