Category Nation/CIS
Source RosBusinessConsulting

MOSCOW — About RUR 500 million ($17.5 million) will be allocated to administrative reforms next year. The sum was agreed to with all concerned ministries, and it was approved by the government’s commission for administrative reforms on Tuesday, Yaroslav Kuzminov, rector of the Higher School of Economics, told RBC. The commission also approved a plan for measures to implement administrative reforms in 2006-2008.

The earmarked money will be spent to hire consultants who will develop new forms of state machine functioning. Part of the funds will go to ministries responsible for developing the mechanism of the reforms.

The government departments will have to develop their plan of action to reorganize their activity, agree it with the commission for administrative reforms and with the economy ministry, after which the finance ministry will give them money according to the reform program.

“I think the main positive aspect of the reform blueprint is rewarding those department trying to introduce new forms of activities. This is an important novelty,” Kuzminov stressed. The blueprint for the administrative reforms was approved by the government’s commission on August 30. It will be finalized within 10 days, after which it will be submitted to the government.

“The reform began with the abolition of excessive functions of ministries and departments. After that, departments were divided into constitutive, executive and regulatory. Now we have a three-layer system: ministries, agencies and services,” Kusmin commented, noting that all this was done in the absence of a detailed program. General principles of administrative reforms were contained in President Putin’s state-of-the-nation addresses, but there was no single document where the goals and stages of the reforms would be laid down.

Last autumn, the economy ministry had submitted to the government the federal program “Administrative reforms” but it soon became clear that this format was not the best for administrative reforms, which required a more flexible approach to financing, Kuzmin told RBC.