IBS IT Services (“IBS”) has been awarded a contract for completion of a pilot 112 system deployment project in the Kursk region. The company will provide infrastructure in eight districts that are not yet connected to the system, which currently operates in 25 districts. By the end of 2011, the Kursk region will have Russia’s first full-fledged regional 112 emergency call system. A presentation of this project will be held for Russia’s senior government officials at the Tver Social and Economic Forum in June.

The Kursk region became a pilot site to develop and test approaches and technology solutions for the implementation of 112 emergency call system, following the project endorsement by the Russian government. Having participated in the overall conceptual development of this government approved system, IBS got engaged in this project as a result of a competitive bid.

“The 112 system is designed to facilitate emergency calls and speed up response times in the first place. Minutes save lives as the drama of an emergency call unfolds, so all services must be streamlined and as efficient as possible. Quality improvements can be achieved only by combining organisation and technology changes and joining all available efforts and resources. This is what the 112 system is all about. It can already be used to streamline the activity of emergency and other services, to receive information directly from the accident site, to reduce decision-making and response times,” says Vladimir Tyminsky, head of the Crisis Management Centre at the Emergencies Ministry in the Kursk Region.

Twenty-five of thirty-three districts that constitute the Kursk region are now equipped to make emergency calls to a unified 112 emergency number. In 2010, the 112 emergency traffic in the Kursk region exceeded the total number of calls to official telephone numbers of individual emergency services, underlining the immediate relevance of a unified emergency number for the community. The system is expected to be completed, and the remaining eight districts to be connected, by the end of 2011.

“In addition to the complexities of designing and building a first-of-its-kind system in Russia, it has been quite difficult to set up and streamline cross-departmental interaction, including interfaces between software and hardware used by various services. We had to put in a lot of effort to meet those challenges. We trained dispatch operators (about 340 people) and technicians of all services involved. It is very important that this project has helped to generate a uniform approach to deploying a 112 system in Russia’s constituent entity, and has given unique technical and organisation experience, which should undoubtedly be used by other regions to deploy the 112 emergency call system across Russia,” says IBS’s deputy director general Sergey Proshletsov.

The first series of official tests held in September 2010 showed that IBS’s 112 software and hardware system satisfied the requirements for efficient call attendance and handling. The tests demonstrated that time required to inform dispatch operators and time to respond to multiple-element calls (when more than one service had to be engaged) was 25 to 40 per cent less when 112 service was used. The system will have to pass the second series of tests upon its complete deployment. Following the tests, the Kursk region will have the first fully certified 112 regional emergency call system in Russia.

With a view to developing the system, in 2011 IBS and OAO NIS, the national navigation services provider, have developed and tested in the Kursk region an integration solution with the pilot Era GLONASS car accident response system, which is scheduled for nationwide deployment by 2014.

IBS IT Services, a member of IBS Group, is the leader in the Russian IT and consulting market. It is part of IBS Group Holding Limited (IBSG), along with Luxoft. Its core lines of business span management consulting, implementation of business applications, IT outsourcing, and IT infrastructure. IBS headcount is about 2,700 employees including over 1,500 certified consultants and professionals. IBS customer base includes 38 of Russia’s top 50 companies. For more information on IBS, please visit www.ibs-company.com.

IBS Group is a leading software development and IT services provider in Eastern Europe. Through its two principal subsidiaries, Luxoft and IBS IT Services, it offers a wide variety of information technology services, such as software development, IT outsourcing, business and IT consulting, business applications implementation. IBS Group is headquartered in Russia and has business operations in Russia, Canada, Germany, Romania, Poland, Switzerland, the UK, Ukraine, the USA, Vietnam and Singapore. IBS Group employs more than 7,200 people worldwide. According to the preliminary unaudited accounts for financial year 2010, IBS Group reported US GAAP revenues of US$656m.

IBS Group’s Global Depositary Receipts are listed on the Regulated Market (General Standard) at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (Bloomberg: IBSG:GR; Reuters: IBSGq.DE). IBS Group is majority-owned by management with portfolio investors holding 31% of the Group’s share capital. For more information on IBS Group, please visit www.ibsgr.com.