Dear colleagues,

Center for Fiscal Policy (CFP) with support of Center for Public-Private Partnership of Vneshekonombank invites you and your staff to take part in the interregional workshop “Perspectives of Public-Private Partnership Development in the North Caucasus: implementing investment projects in conditions of increased investment risks”.

The workshop will be held on March 17, 2010 in Pyatigorsk, conference-hall of the hotel “Beshtau”, 17, 1-ya Bulvarnaya Street.

The workshop agenda includes presentations of experts of CFP, the World Bank, representatives of the RF Ministry of Economic Development, other federal agencies, Vneshekonombank, Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies, VTB, Sberbank of the RF. Head officials of the regional authorities, local self-governance bodies and private companies will take part in the workshop.

The following issues will be discussed:

* What impedes transmission of the PPP proven experience to the North Caucasus? What are the main sources of risks and the mechanisms of their reduction?

* Do the PPP projects need a special institutional infrastructure? What is the role of the state in PPP development?

* Is there any possibility of implementing the PPP projects under the current legislative and normative framework?

* What are the required conditions for attracting investments to the North Caucasus?

The round table discussions on the main expectations of the state, investors and private business from the public-private partnership will be conducted within the workshop. More detailed information is available at the official web-site of the Center for Fiscal Policy.

The article of Y.Y. Savchenko «Improvement of public and municipal services quality through MfSCs – the legal aspect» was published in the magazine “Public and Municipal Governance Issues” (2009. № 2. P. 104-113).

Annotation of this article is given below:

One of the main objectives of implementing the administrative reform in the Russian Federation is improvement of quality and accessibility of public services through development of network of multifunctional centers for provision of public and municipal services (MfSCs). The current federal legislation has conceptually confirmed necessity of the MfSCs framework development but has not identified the legal regulation basis for this framework (arrangement of MfSCs activity, requirements to the order of MfSCs establishment and operation, including interaction of MfSCs with authorities, which provide their services on the basis of MfSCs). The article reviews experience of MfSCs development in the RF regions, analyzes organizational models of authorities involvement into MfSCs operation, describes each model in terms of its optimality and availability (lack) of legal challenges within interaction of authorities with MfSCs, proposes legal instruments for resolution thereof.

The full text of the article is available at the official web-site of the magazine . The text of the article [91 Кbytes].

Presentations of innovative developments in the area of public and municipal governance, seminars and round tables discussions on critical issues of medium-term planning, assessment of public and municipal governance quality, introduction of “electronic governance” will be conducted during the “Week”.

Agenda of the events to be conducted during the “Week” is available here .

The International scientific conference held at the State University — Higher School of Economics on February 9, 2010, was devoted to reduction of administrative barriers and improvement of business climate in modern Russia. The President of the Institute for National Project “Public Agreement” Alexander Auzan said that the administrative barriers reduction related activities started in the year 2000 do not have any long-term results. He believes that no efforts are able to bring any results unless they are coordinated by all parties — power, business and society.

 Director of Department for administrative reform of the Center for Strategic Research V.N. Yuzhakov presented a report during the conference: «Barriers for obtaining public e-services by entrepreneurs: possible ways of removal”.

 Director of Department for small and medium enterprise development of the RF Ministry of economic development Andrey Sharov agreed that technical regulations lay down the rules, which later become barriers if their definition is out of date. “Victory of business under technical regulation can be achieved only through reduction of compulsory certification. To my mind, business stays aside from the reform. As a result, some officials develop technical regulations, others void thereof”, - mentioned A. Sharov.

The Rostov Region was one of the first among 16 RF regions which initiated development of infrastructure for qualitative provision of services to population. The first multifunctional service centers (MfSCs) were set up in Shakhty and Novocherkassk in 2007. MfSCs fulfill the function of citizens' interaction with authorities in the process of obtaining different certificates, permits, licences, etc. Whereby quality of services provision is essentially upgraded: terms,queue time, number of the required documents, agencies to visit are reduced.

Nine MfSCs are running in the Rostov Region (Salsk raion, Novocherkassk, Taganrog, Bataisk, Azov, two in Shakhty and two in Rostov-on-Don). 771 thousand people were provided with MfSC services in 2009. From 21 to 305 services related to social, property and land, communal and economic spheres are provided.

 The RF Government is going to issue a comprehensive list of the fee-based public services and abandon outsourcing thereof to commercial organizations. That was informed by the RF Prime-Minister Vladimir Putin during the All-Russian meeting on summing-up performance results of the RF Ministry for Civil Defence for 2009.

“The list of the fee-based services should be comprehensive and tariff should be economically sound. These functions related to collection of payments should not be transferred to commercial organizations, but are to be executed by state authorities”, - said Putin. He added that the appropriate amendments should be incorporated into the current legislation as soon as possible.

Complete information is available at the official web-site of Prime-Tass Agency.

Based on the results of competition conducted under the federal target program «Electronic Russia» the Republic of Daghestan has become one of the winners in the area of the regional informatization and has been selected as a pilot region for introduction of the “IT system for support of the RF public authorities within public services provision through electronic means of communication”. Under this project the company “USP-CompuLink” (www.usp-compulink.ru), the leading Russian system integrator, jointly with the Department for Information and Analytical Support of the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Daghestan has completed automation of work of executive authorities in the Republic of Daghestan in the pilot regions. Commissioning of the IT system for support of public services provision to population took place in late December 2009 in Makhachkhala and Buinaksk.

Internet address of public services portal — IT system «One stop-shop»: http://gu.e-dag.ru

The key objective of the new IT system is to improve performance of public authorities of the Republic within provision of social services to Daghestan citizens.

The system of public institutions will be reorganized in the Republic of Kalmykia. The aim is to increase accountability of the Republic. That was announced by the Chairman of the RK Government Vladimir Sengleev.

As he explained, it is planned to proceed with amalgamation of public institutions, some of which will become autonomous and some, due to functions overlapping, will be closed down.

Optimization will cover the whole range of public social services: health, education, culture. It's not a secret that public institutions were frequently involved into activities beyond public services level.

Optimization related activity will be mostly completed by the end of the first quarter of 2010. It is proposed to reduce the list of state positions in the republican budget for 2010, reorganize the inner structure of executive authorities, reduce salary of civil servants.

Authorities promise to undertake constant analysis of economic background, search for new sources of income, reduce second-rate expenditures, allowing only for the most outstanding ones.

Dear colleagues,

We present for your attention the updated catalog of analytical materials on public administration reform in the Russian Federation (at the federal level) .

The updated catalog includes materials of the World Bank's activities related to performance management and improvement of public services quality, as well as materials of the international conferences on public administration.

Columns of the table with new materials are highlighted in green.

As usually you are welcome to get access to the materials you are interested in via e-mail application. Please, indicate the number of the document you are looking for. Contact person: Tumun Tsydypov – Development Partners Secretariat for Governance Reforms in Russia (The World Bank /UK DFID). Phone: +7 495 745 7000, ext. 2082, E-mail: Этот адрес e-mail защищен от спам-ботов. Чтобы увидеть его, у Вас должен быть включен Java-Script