In brief
A talk on forensic computer examinations (SKTE) of custom-built, primarily government, automated systems: what questions the court puts, why an examination takes a year or two, why the expert ends up working as a tester. The trigger is a contract of 150 million – several billion rubles and software that does not meet the ToR. The speaker is not selling a product and names the weak points of the practice himself; the second half of the segment is a discussion with a female opponent from the audience.
Key points
- A state automated system (GAS) automates a function of a government body: "Pravosudie" — court proceedings, "Legal Statistics" — prosecutors.
- Contracts of 150 million – "several billion rubles"; disputes in the commercial (arbitrazh) courts, sometimes "it even gets to criminal cases"; an SKTE — "99% of the time, even 99.99%".
- Appraisers are brought in (the cost of what was done, or of "finishing the system") — the examination becomes multidisciplinary; "I'm not an appraiser" is repeated three times.
- The court's questions: compliance with the contract / the ToR / the detailed ToR; what does not work and why; critical defects and whether they are remediable; cost.
- The ToR for large systems is detailed, but it can also be ten pages; there can also be a demand beyond the ToR — and the contractor fulfills it for nothing.
- A critical defect: "the buttons are blinking", but the report that matters does not get generated — a "pretty toy", people do the work by hand; an irremediable one is a defect whose fixing means a new contract "for another billion rubles".
- Pain point No. 1: publicly available methodologies for examining automated systems "simply don't exist"; their own algorithm (objects → completeness of the deliverables → compliance with the ToR) they "haven't packaged".
- Every automated system is a "unique palace": "one developer can do it for 100 thousand, another for a million, and a third for a billion".
- Pain point No. 2 is volume: boxes of paper, "millions of lines of code", systems for 5–10 thousand people; in the current examination — 1,041 requirements by hand, "as testers of sorts".
- Timeframes — a year, a year and a half, two, "really expensive"; a panel of 3 or 4 people; the record is 9 people in the room: 2 forensic experts and 7 representatives.
- Cost — the Moscow DIT and COCOMO methodologies; the scheme "87 percent was done, so that's 87 million" he calls a common one, "but we don't do it that way".
- Tips: take stock of the objects, prepare the questions for the expert, hire professional forensic experts; a PDF checklist from the slide.
Tools, artifacts, technologies
- GAS "Legal Statistics" — the object of the examination: "from scratch", per the detailed ToR and the test programme and procedure; GAS "Pravosudie", Gosuslugi — examples of automated systems.
- The Moscow DIT methodology, COCOMO — valuation by quantitative indicators, the results are "more or less the same".
- Their own algorithm for examining automated systems — not packaged; software for comparing source code — their own development since 2025, unnamed; a checklist (PDF).
- Objects: the ToR, the detailed ToRs, manuals, explanatory notes, contracts; source code on flash drives and discs; the deployed system.
- From the discussion: SAP, banking systems, the handheld terminal, Microsoft Windows, aircraft simulators; the state information system of Rosreestr (Barannikov) — acceptance under Federal Law 44-FZ, code "with hashes", load tests.
Legal and organizational context
An SKTE is a way of bringing specialized knowledge into court proceedings; it is often multidisciplinary, with an appraiser ("not an economist as such, but an appraiser"). The venue is the commercial (arbitrazh) courts, sometimes "criminal cases". The court puts the questions; the parties have the right to be present; "the court pays us, not a party". The contract documents: the ToR, the detailed ToR, the test programme and procedure, acceptance. From the audience — Federal Law 44-FZ (acceptance of a state contract with experts involved, as the customer's insurance), the position of the EKC MVD (check the discrepancies rather than test the system), R&D projects, Interpolitex. The disputed point is whether an expert may file a motion to have the questions reformulated.
Questions from the audience
There is no speaker labeling, the remarks from the audience were recognized less well; attribution is by context.
- A former employee of the Forensic Science Centre of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia (her name is not spoken): at the EKC "never in our lives did we take on a question about testing", the expert's job is the specific discrepancies; Windows or an aircraft simulator cannot be checked against a ToR. → Bezik: the court puts the questions; this is about systems built from scratch — GAS "Legal Statistics", with a detailed ToR and a test programme and procedure.
- The argument about reformulating the questions: "You can, why not?" — "I've never come across that. Never"; 5 million for an examination versus "200 thousand, or 500 thousand".
- Sergey Nikolaevich Barannikov, a forensic expert: the checking has to be done at acceptance under Federal Law 44-FZ, so that the customer does not "go to prison for accepting God knows what"; the case is the state information system of Rosreestr.
- Andrey: are the cost questions handled in a multidisciplinary format, with economists, or in-house? → Multidisciplinary; what is needed is specifically an appraiser.
- An unnamed participant (possibly the same Andrey; heavily garbled): what formulas should be used to cost a "super-high-quality" development, and what happens to the system while the dispute is going on? The answer covers the first.
- The same woman: "you're calculating the percentages all wrong" — the weight of a module cannot be determined; in R&D the winner is whoever has prior developments. The finale: at the tests "90% of the tasks are settled", the dispute is over 10%, "so which of them will pay you those 5 million"? → "I think we're speaking different languages".
The speaker's position
He stays inside the procedural frame: he answers the court's questions as they are put; if the question is about compliance with the ToR, then every requirement gets checked. He dismisses the SAP and Windows argument as being about off-the-shelf products: custom systems with a detailed ToR and a test programme and procedure can be checked in full. He names the limits himself: "I'm not an appraiser", the methodology is not packaged, the examinations are long and expensive. The tone is a lecture with self-irony, defensive in the discussion.
Quotes
- "…99% of the time, even 99.99%, a forensic computer examination gets appointed."
- "Well, as they say, without a good spec, the result is anyone's guess."
- "…don't take on all the testing. That's a road to nowhere."
- "It's always amazed me when people try to evaluate what they don't understand."
- "The court pays us, not a party."