Russia's Federal Tax Service Is Ready to Spend Up to 1.069 Billion Rubles on Upgrading Its Data Center Telephone Network

The Federal Tax Service (FNS) has decided to upgrade the telephone infrastructure that underpins its communication with taxpayers. The maximum purchase price is 1.069 billion rubles. The money will go toward hardware and software systems for the agency's departmental telephone network in two FNS data centers, in Dubna and Gorodets. The agency plans to choose a contractor on 20 October 2026, and only days remain until the results. TAdviser spotted the procurement first.

What exactly the FNS is buying

Electronic auction No. 0337100017726000177 combines three cost items: equipment, software and services. This is a standard framework for projects of this scale. The winner must supply the hardware and licenses and carry out the deployment itself. The excerpt of the technical specification available in the publication breaks off at the words about modernization "using...". Which platforms, vendors and classes of solutions the specification includes is not yet clear. It is too early to say what the project will consist of.

The basic design is easy to read. The agency's telephone network is hosted not in the server rooms of individual tax offices but in two large data centers. This architecture provides geographic redundancy: if one site goes down, the other carries the load. Dubna is in the Moscow Region and Gorodets is in the Nizhny Novgorod Region. These are different regions with different trunk routes.

Procurement figures

• Maximum contract price: 1.069 billion rubles.
• Sites: two FNS data centers, in Dubna and Gorodets.
• Auction number: 0337100017726000177.
• Scope: equipment, software, services.
• Contractor selection date: 20 October 2026.
• Stated goal: make it easier for taxpayers to get through by phone.

A little over a billion rubles sounds substantial for telephony. But this is a ceiling, not the final cost. In public procurement, the final price is often lower, because bidders cut it during the auction. The real picture will be clear after 20 October, when the winner and the contract amount become known.

Why getting through became a separate task

The FNS serves one of the largest audiences in the country. Taxpayers call the service with general questions and during peak periods: before tax payment deadlines and during the tax return season. In those weeks, the load on the lines spikes. If the system's capacity is sized for an ordinary day, callers hear a busy signal or wait a long time for an answer.

Upgrading hardware and software systems typically addresses exactly these bottlenecks: throughput, call routing and fault tolerance. The available part of the material contains no specific target figures. There is no data on the number of concurrent connections, wait times or the share of dropped calls. Without that, it is hard to judge how ambitious the goal is.

What to watch next

The first marker is the auction result on 20 October. It matters who wins and how far the price falls from 1.069 billion rubles. A sharp drop often signals tough competition. If there is only one bidder, the price, as a rule, stays close to the starting figure.

The second marker is the full text of the technical specification. It will show what architecture is planned: one built on domestic solutions or a mixed one, how redundancy between Dubna and Gorodets is organized, and whether there are requirements for integration with the agency's other systems, above all the contact center and citizen inquiry channels.

The third is the practical outcome. For taxpayers, the result of the upgrade is simple to measure: will wait times fall on peak days? The FNS should publish target metrics before launch. That would give a billion-ruble project a verifiable goal, rather than just a line in the procurement documents.