Efficient Administration Is of Highest Importance for Russian Regions, Say SPIEF Guests

Participants of St. Petersburg International Economic Forum held on 18 to 20 June 2015 came to this conclusion. Almost half of the respondents said that it is the key factor for development. One third of them said that infrastructural development is the key factor. Only 20% of them named investment generation and development of the social infrastructure. It is remarkable that the opinion of the forum participants coincided entirely with the opinion of the respondents in the poll with the same questions held on the Internet. This indicates that improvement of efficiency of public administration is indeed one of the topical issues. Sberbank plenary session, entitled Crisis mitigation Policies: The Need for Government Reform, was dedicated to this issue.

“Public administration system in Russia has now created something that my fellow consultants call ‘situational management”, that is, instruction-based administration. It is a way to go in case of local victories or short-term achievements in combating depression; however, it is very difficult to plan something for a long term, to balance resources and to efficiently manage them with this system. To be more exact, impossible even. Yes, paramount chiefs of our country, best domestic experts, our leaders understand this, but implementation of efficient management tools are taken skeptically locally. The conclusion is obvious: If the public administration system fails to function efficiently, we will never get there. However, I do not want to sound pessimistic. I want to believe in the best to come, and not to simply believe, but to apply my hands and my head to achieve this better place. Our management practices are there to help the system to become more efficient. This is what we are going to focus our efforts on in the next three years and this is where we want to achieve a considerable progress,” Head of Public Sector Practice and Management of Change Practice and Member of ACIG Board Aleksey Shipov commented on the results of the session and the poll.