The article includes a description of a system to monitor effi ciency of municipal authorities, evaluation of a federal monitoring introduced in 2010, and a proposal aimed at a more useful and eff ective monitoring system. Th e main drawback of the quality assessment methodology, currently being
implemented in Russia by the federal authorities is a very long monitoring and assessment period. Annually-based monitoring does not allow regional
governments to use it in a budgetary process and everyday governance. The probable solution for such a problem can be found in a monitoring conducted quarterly or monthly, with a smaller set of vital performance indicators. Most of currently used data is being collected by Federal statistics service on a monthly or quarterly basis, so the proposed way does not require much eff ort while provides a lot of useful, operative and proved data both to regional and municipal authorities.