The objective to improve the effectiveness of public administration and governance in the context of cuts in public resources available for supporting public authorities is especially urgent at the time of economic crisis. Cutting payroll for federal executive bodies by 10 per cent is one of the initiatives which are being reviewed as part of the efforts to amend the federal budget for 2015. In some cases, such reduction would inflict actual job cuts while the total volume of public administration functions should be maintained if not raised.

Sustaining the current level of government effectiveness in the current context requires a critical review of the existing allocation of human resources with respect to objectives and targets of federal executive authorities and public policies as a whole. The review of staff allocations by functional groups presented in this article demonstrates that the existing use of human resources by federal executive bodies is suboptimal. To reduce the total staffi ng level and to allocate the resources rationally in accordance with the priorities (the latter being more important than the former), it is necessary to implement strategic HR management practices synchronized with the systems of strategic and budget planning.

This article is based on the research on Improving Effectiveness of Public Administration and Optimization of Staff Level conducted as a part of public assignment for RANEPA in 2014.