For the past two years, one could witness the Russian blogosphere becoming more and more empowered by technology. Although the bloggers’ abilities are quite limited, they have already attracted attention of both the Russian and international media. Until recently, the technological level of online transparency initiatives remained quite low. The majority of IT professionals were not eager to join civil society activists and their initiatives. The evidence of this can be seen on technology blogs (e.g., habrahabr.ru), where numerous “technocrats” fall for the traditionally cynical explanation of civic activity (the bottom line of the discourse can be described as “conspiracy of the West”). In 2010, this seems to have changed. As technology is getting more and more accessible and easy to develop, more online initiatives appear and are planned to be launched in late 2010 and 2011. Russian transparency projects can be divided into five main groups: 1. official and semi-official transparency websites (e.g., zakupki.gov.ru, rosspending.ru), 2. chaotic transparency communities (individual investigative bloggers and LJ communities), 3. online representation of civil activist NGOs (e.g., golos.org, publicverdict.ru), 4. next-generation social networks dedicated to transparency and civil rights activism (e.g., democrator.ru, taktaktak.ru), and a growing number of Ushahidi-based projects. 1. Official and semi-official transparency websites Work on putting public procurement data online started in 2006 with the launch of zakupki.gov.ru, a catalog of major public expenses. Since then, a number of other official and semi-official websites have appeared (e.g., statetenders.ru, igz.hse.ru). All these websites have poor interface and a low level of data accessibility. These flaws and the lack of interactive functions lead to the emergence of LiveJournal communities dedicated to the analysis of the most bizarre deals. In July 2010, Rosspending.ru was launched to solve the visualization issue. Ivan Begtin, the creator of the project and one of the Russian Gov 2.0 evangelists, took the data and presented it in a more user-friendly and understandable way. Despite the lack of social networking as well as Semantic Web functionality, the portal has been inspired by data.gov.uk and data.gov and is the best example of the Russian government data visualization so far. 2. Chaotic transparency communities and individual investigative bloggers A number of non-institutionalized LiveJournal communities have taken up the watchdog functions that traditional Russian NGOs simply fear to conduct. GV has been covering their activity recently. Individual investigative bloggers have probably had more impact than the LJ communities. The New Times called [RUS] eight most prominent investigative bloggers (Alexey Navalny, Alexey Dymovski, Alexander Malyutin and others) employees of a “self-made Ministry of the Interior”: […] общество провело черту между собой и милицией. В интернете обнаружились диссиденты в погонах, подменяющие собой Департамент собственной безопасности МВД, рассказывающие властям и согражданам о коррупции в органах и деградации службы. А блогеры стали искать и находить виновных в преступлениях, взяв на себя роль и уголовного розыска, и департамента экономической безопасности, и милиции общественного порядка. Пока власти рассуждают о реформе МВД, народ начал свою. 3. Online representation of offline NGOs “Traditional NGOs” still struggle with new tools. This happens for several reasons: the lack of vision, resources, and external conditions. There is an exception, though – golos.org, which has introduced two online transparency tools – The Election Hotline [RUS] and the Fact Bank [RUS]. (GV wrote about Golos’ Election Hotline project here.) 4. Next-Generation Transparency Tools So far there are only two projects in this category – democrator.ru and taktaktak.ru. Both were launched in 2010 and share social networking functionality (everyone can register, comment and take part in the site's activity) and issue-based structure. Democrator.ru helps citizens to discuss and prepare petitions and official appeals to the authorities, and monitors the issues by publishing official responses from the authorities. Taktaktak.ru connects citizens and lawyers, facilitating discussion of various issues and search for possible solutions. Both projects are of a very high technological level and represent unique transparency solutions. 5. Ushahidi platforms The first Ushahidi in the Russian language was installed in Kyrgyzstan and was initially called “aikol.kg.” Later the project transformed into save.kg.