| On August 3, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov announced
the launching of a new phase in the administrative reform. "Now every
ministry, service and agency is to set up performance criteria and clearly
define the purpose of their activity," Zhukov reported to President
Vladimir Putin. "The departments should clearly see how they fit into
the overall goals the government is trying to achieve, namely to improve
living standards, to increase GDP, and enhance the country's security."
The first stage of the administrative reform was given top marks. The
head of state was particularly pleased with initiating White House changes
well in advance. "If this work had been begun after inauguration,
we would now be only at the beginning of the road". Zhukov went further:
"The role of the ministries and government departments is now greater:
they are far more autonomous at present, with the functions of the former
ministries divided between ministries, services and agencies."
The deputy prime minister, to put it mildly, was talking tongue in cheek.
The fundamental principle of the reform - to separate law-setting functions
from control and supervisory ones - remains on paper. The services and
agencies, as before, are subordinated to the ministries, which
makes the restructuring senseless. On the other hand, instead of 59 departments
we now have 82. In the regions the administrative reform degenerated into
blind imitation of the management scheme in Moscow. On top of all this,
another commission on the administrative reform was set up. The result
of all these pains is that the system has remained the same, with some
smartening up of the facade concealing the disarray that has plagued the
ministries and departments over the past few months. However, the right
thing for reformers is not the content of the reform, but proper PR. It
is the criterion used to judge the result.
For example, the broad public need not know that recently ordinary Russian
bureaucrats instead of ordinary Russians, have had their living standards
substantially improved. The main and most radical measure recently has
been the preservation of all former benefits for bureaucrats, as well
as an appreciable increase in their salaries. The reformers say in their
defense that in this way they will curb corruption. This is a very doubtful
argument, and seen against the backdrop of abolished benefits for pensioners
and the disabled, this measure is highly cynical and
immoral. But the president dotted all the i's in the dispute on whether
or not to keep in-kind allowances for bureaucrats by signing last week
a law "On the Civil Service in the Russian Federation." According
to this document, benefits are to be retained in full for an indefinite
period of time not only for statesmen, but also for their families.
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