Issue 2011 no2 contents:

The article is devoted to the interaction of public and social structures in the modernization of the social sphere. Th e article contains the results of the empirical researches which prove the prospect of such interaction, and along with that permit to identify the factors that limit the space of such interaction and decrease its eff ectiveness. Th us, a number of recommendations, aimed at creating a more realistic and vital social policy, is substantiated in this article.

Inter-municipal cooperation is an eff ective way of business management in many countries of the world. Nevertheless its potential in Russia has been obviously underestimated. Th e article substantiates and off ers some methods of creating the most vital infrastructures for supporting small businesses at the municipal level such as business-incubators, using inter-municipal cooperation principles.

The article says about the necessity to create an eff ective structure to counteract corruption. It should be based on the “prevention principle”, the absence of which is believed to be making it signifi cantly diffi cult to fi ght corruption in our country. Having analyzed the world experience in this fi eld, the author says that this structure can include some components which are capable to increase efficiency of the fi ght against corruption for a long period of time.

The article considers the implementation of a new instrument at the regional level. It is a long-term contract in road building which motivates business to provide a good, qualitative service in road building; repairing and exploiting an infrastructural transport object during its life-long cycle, with risks being optimized and committed fi nances distributed over the lead time.

This article examines the interaction between municipal district and settlement authorities. Th e author covers such aspects as local economy, a human factor in the relationships, methods of forming a municipal district’s representative body and practical problems of the territorial organization of the local self-government. The text is supported by some examples from the author’s fi eld research conducted in diff erent municipalities of Russia.

The article discusses the problem of legislation development in the sphere of public procurement. Th ere is a general description and assessment of the existing legal regulations given in the article, as well as creating ideas and setting goals of the federal contracting system. It describes examples from the international practice.

Since 2010 a number of measures has been taken to improve the management of public institutions. A suffi cient amount of work has been done after the approval of Federal Law of 8 May 2010 No 83-FZ “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation to Improve the Legal Status of Governmental (Municipal) Institutions”, a number of subordinate acts (on institution activities, planning, monitoring, state orders etc.) was developed. Still, some approved and implemented by-laws and acts have drawbacks which may cast doubt on the eff ectiveness of the reform. Some drawbacks, such as lack of clear terminology, unclear status of non-governmental services, discrepancy between planning and reporting forms, state orders isolation from other planning tools, are described in this article, and suggestions on how they may be solved are made.

Now interests of realization of a system territorial policy are refl ected in the current legislation but in a small degree. With the majority of the territorial programs having an obvious regional orientation, the current legislation is now more accurately oriented on the decision of priority, strategic problems of territorial management. Th e article off ers some guide lines to modernize the legal base in the fi eld of the target programming of territorial development, which should be considered as ones of the obligatory preconditions for creating an effective mechanism of the state regional policy.

The article is devoted to the formation of a human resources policy in the public administration: trends of its development, problems and principles of its implementation. Th e article focuses on the formation of the civic and professional identity in public service workers. Experience of Vologda public administration and municipal management bodies is a good example of a successful implementation of the human resources policy. Th ey could fi nd some eff ective ways of solving problems which arise in the work with human resources.

Under the norms of the Forest Code in its new edition the Subjects of the Federation are provided with the most important powers of managing the development of forests. To make forests management more eff ective, it is necessary that a big volume of forest be rented at a higher price annually, hence increasing the regional budget input. It is natural that some objective factors impede eff ective management growth, but there are also some reasons of a subjective nature. Some decisions of the Federal administration, which relate to the principles of the “hand management” and do not comply with the logic of the Forest Code, are reasonably believed to hinder eff ective forest managing and forming a sound forest market.

This article is devoted to the evaluation of the capabilities of the regional public administration to handle forest relations eff ectively and restrictions, both objective and subjective, that they face in the course of work.

The article accumulates the Russian and foreign experience in assessing e-Government eff ectiveness. The methodologies were divided into two main groups: the assessment of e-Government readiness (including the assessment of governmental portals) and the evaluation of e-Government eff ects. Th e methods and criteria which are the most interesting from the point of view of their realization in the Russian practice were determined within the methodologies and techniques mentioned in the article. Th is article suggests some methods, indicators and criteria of assessing e-Government eff ectiveness which are appropriate for the Russian Federation reality.