Today many people talk about the technological sovereignty of Russia. But is digital sovereignty possible for the commonwealth of the BRICS countries? It sure is since within the frameworks of BRICS a long-term cooperation on creating digital technologies is implied, and that is impossible without legal support.
The problems of digital sovereignty of BRICS is the topic of joint work by Deputy Director for International Activity of the SUSU Institute of Law, Doctor of Sciences (Law) Elizaveta Gromova and her colleague from Brazil Daniel Brantes Ferreira, which has been published in a Q2 journal indexed in Scopus.
“Digital sovereignty is the internal and external independence of a country in creating and using innovative digital technologies. Having faced an unprecedented sanctions pressure, Russia is experiencing this need first-hand today,” says Elizaveta Gromova. “Digital sovereignty is based on four principles: information protection, cyber security issues, efficient regulation of legislation based on the results of work of experimental platforms, and favourable climate for development of technologies.”
With regards to experimental legal platforms, Elizaveta Gromova is one of the best experts. Such platforms, which are also known as “regulatory sandboxes”, have been used in practice before, both in Russia and abroad. Now is high time to translate this method to the level of BRICS as well.
Elizaveta Gromova wrote her doctoral thesis (“Stimulating legal regimes in the field of digital innovations and technologies”) on the topic of such platforms, as well as on creation of favourable conditions for technologies development. She successfully defended her work in Kazan in the middle of October of 2024.
While working on her thesis, Elizaveta Gromova also came up with a “legislative initiative”: a package of amendments to the Russian legislation aimed at creating favourable conditions for conducting business in the field of digital innovations and technologies. Changes are also proposed for such federal laws as “On Economic Zones of the Russian Federation”, “On the Skolkovo Innovation Centre”, “On Contract Systems in the Sphere of Procurement…for Provisioning…Needs”, “On Development of Small and Medium Business”, and others.
Digital sovereignty is also impossible without controlling search engines (those corresponding to the main language and domain of a country) and without filtering the information that might pose a threat to the country’s security. The first successful example of protecting digital sovereignty is the creation of the Chinese Great Firewall – by analogy with the Great Wall of China – which restricts the access of residents of the People's Republic of China to Western social media and search engines. Another project, which is considered to be just as successful, is the Russian project “Gosuslugi” (“State Services”), which provides access to interaction with public officials for citizens of Russia without the need to wait in line in person for a long time.
However, there is a certain asymmetry between laws within BRICS as well. For the development of unmanned transport (either land or air transport), unified regulations are required regarding its maintenance and operation. In Islamic countries, such as Iran or Saudi Arabia, there are specifics in terms medical ethics and handling of health-related information. Representatives of India and Iran are largely concerned about the issues of finance management. By the way, in their work, Elizaveta Gromova and Daniel Ferreira presume that in order to ensure digital sovereignty of BRICS, single currency will be needed, which will be independent of dollar or euro, and it might as well be a digital currency.
To coordinate laws of different countries, so that both governments and business could agree with those, experiments in international legal “sandboxes” are required. And to launch their work, along with further research by legal scholars, a relevant declaration should be adopted during the next BRICS summit, which will be based on approximately the same principles as the package of amendments to the Russian legislation developed by Elizaveta Gromova.
In the meantime, Elizaveta Gromova from SUSU is mastering a new field – legal support for quantum computers of the future. Quantum computers will emerge in about 30-50 years, but the algorithms and data transfer networks for them are being modelled already today. It is also high time to think about which state regulations will help make quantum technologies safe for the society.
“Other countries don’t lag behind, and already now concepts begin to emerge for both general strategic planning and special documents regulating the creation and implementation of quantum technologies,” states Elizaveta Gromova. “And of course, we can’t do without experimental legal regimes here. Regulatory sandboxes allow to test services, business models and products based on quantum technologies.”
Thus, already today, legal scholars from BRICS countries, including scientists from SUSU, are experimenting with and modelling the laws, which are required for the future.