Problems and Ways of Improving the System of Strategic Planning in Russia

Abstract

The administrative reform in Russia, the main declared directions of which were to reduce excessive state regulation and to improve the quality of public services as well as transparency and efficiency of public authorities, has been going on for more than 13 years. In some of these areas, considerable progress has been achieved in this period. However, the positions of Russia in international rankings of government effectiveness have remained unchanged - or even decreased - since the beginning of the administrative reform. According to the authors, one possible explanation for this could be the significant shortcomings of the strategic planning system and its gap with the budget planning, which makes it difficult to achieve the goals set in the country’s key strategic documents. The authors consider the main ways to overcome the shortcomings of the strategic planning system in Russia to be related to its significant simplification through a radical reduction in the number of documents included in it, which would reduce the threat of contradictions between them, as well as to bridging the gap between strategic and budgetary planning, which implies that the socio-economic development strategy (SEDR) contains development goals in all spheres of public administration, but does not contain any assessment of the resources needed to achieve these goals, the forecast of their availability, or the priorities of their distribution in case of lack of resources. In order to link strategic planning to budget planning, SEDR should operate with the projected amount of budget resources not connected with the existing obligations, which, even with a favorable forecast, is unlikely to exceed 10-15% of the current budget expenditure. Using such means in the medium term, it is impossible to achieve progress in all areas at the same time. Therefore, it seems appropriate to abandon the setting of strategic goals in all spheres of public administration for the sake of concentrating funds and efforts on 5-7 priority areas. The article proposes specific measures necessary for the implementation of these principles in strategic planning.