Russians will soon be able to purchase cemetery plots through online state services portal
Residents of 21 regions of Russia will soon be able to purchase cemetery plots through the online government services portal Gosuslugi, newspaper Kommersant reported on Thursday, citing documents from the country’s Digital Development Ministry.
The ministry plans to upload data on 14,000 cemeteries to Russia’s National Spatial Data System and set up channels for importing further information. The initiative, which is expected to cost 295.5 million rubles (€3.1 million), would make 15 funeral-related government services available online, according to the documents.
An online “burial management” service is already operating in six Russian regions, and officials are “actively working” to roll it out in another 15, the Digital Development Ministry told Kommersant. The ministry said the move would make funeral services easier for citizens to access and more transparent.
But the project also faces technical hurdles, including incomplete and inconsistent data, according to Alexey Suloyev, president of the Association of Russian Crematoria, who said the problems had already become clear during a pilot phase.
Ilya Boltunov, head of the funeral home Zhuravli, said that even once the online service is available, people will still have to visit the cemetery administration in person to verify documents. He argued that this undercuts the benefits of digitalisation, since staff on-site can still pressure customers into paying inflated prices for services.
