Zaslavskaya Nadezhda M.

The issues of legal protection of the environment, improving the efficiency of public administration in the environmental sphere have been elevated to the rank of national goals, the way to achieve which, according to official estimates, is seen, among other things, in the introduction of digital technologies. The article raises the problem of the lack of clarity and unambiguity of the definition of the legal concept of “digital society” and all terms derived from it. The purpose of the study was to study the existing regulatory definitions and doctrinal approaches to the concept of digitalization in the aspect of state environmental management, which is considered as the process of introducing digital technologies into the activities of state bodies that improve the quality of their functions. At the same time, under the digital transformation of such management in the article, it is proposed to understand the transition to such a state of environmental management, which is characterized by the onset of specific socially significant results from the use of digital technologies. The readiness of public administration in the field of environmental protection for digital transformation — regulatory, software, technical support, training, etc., should be called digital maturity, which, in turn, is a prerequisite for digital transformation, transition to a digital society.

The article is a continuation of the previously published work “Legal foundations of state environmental management in a digital society: Terms and definitions”. As it was noted, the issues of environmental protection, improving the efficiency of public administration in the environmental sphere have been elevated to the rank of national goals, the way to achieve which, according to official estimates, is seen, inter alia, in the introduction of digital technologies. This article examines the issues of methods of legal regulation of public relations in the field of state environmental management. The question of the transformation of the ways of the influence of law as a social regulator on public relations in the conditions of digitalization is considered. The paper attempts to identify trends in the transformation of the method of legal regulation of public relations in the field of state environmental management in a digital society. As such, the following are noted: expansion of “digitized” spheres of state environmental management, reduction of discretionary powers in the field of state environmental management in the context of digitalization, change in the subject composition of managerial legal relations, strengthening of the principles of dispositivity of the method of legal regulation of relations in the field of state environmental management, fragmentation of environmental legislation in terms of regulation of public environmental relations, including in the field of state environmental management.

The article examines the legal significance of environmental information in a digital society and examines its characteristics such as reliability. It is this quality of information about the state of the environment that is enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation. It is noted that reliable information about the state of the environment is information that is at the same time genuine (objective, undistorted, accurate), and sufficient (not excessive, but not fragmentary and not selective), and relevant (timely), unbiasedly collected and analyzed by a competent subject. The definition of the term “information on the state of the environment (environmental information)” included in the Federal Law “On Environmental Protection” in 2021 is also analyzed. It is concluded that the legal definition of the term in question does not allow distinguishing environmental information from all other information. The right to environmental information is analyzed in relation to the modern system of information support for state environmental management. The necessity of establishing a regime of transparency of information on the state of the environment is substantiated. It is proposed to develop and implement an information mechanism in the field of environmental protection — a system of information measures of influence (interrelated legal means that mediate the processes of collection, accumulation, analysis, storage, provision and use of reliable environmental information) on people’s behavior in order to ensure environmental protection, rational use of natural resources, environmental safety of humans and other objects.