Issue 2018 no2 contents:

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how the use of administrative data can promptly and with low costs improve the accuracy and informativeness of official statistical indicators of the labor market. The Russian offi cial labor statistics currently use the only two sources of statistical information: statistical reporting of enterprises and population surveys. The authors show that the available indicators are inconsistent with each other and do not meet the needs of users. The example of Moscow shows that the available administrative data (data from the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation) allow both to increase the accuracy of the already calculated indicators of employment and wages through the full coverage of respondents, and to introduce new indicators that are currently not calculated by official statistics (wages of Russian citizens and foreigners, salaries of people working for several employers, etc.). The limitations of the Pension Fund’s data, as well as recommendations for the incorporating administrative data into the system of official statistics at the regional and national levels, are discussed.

The article examines the opportunities of business tendency surveys of enterprises in condition of official statistics imperfection considering the specifics of the development of Russian economy in recent years. Based on the 25-year experience of the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy in the field of conducting and developing monthly surveys of industrial enterprises, it is shown that this data source is able to supplement the results of traditional statistics, and in the case of 2008–2009 crises, and 2015–2016 – significantly surpass them. So, the crisis of 2008–2009 was registered by IEP surveys a month before its official recognition, and especially in 2015–2016 – the absence of a crisis recession in demand, output and employment, with confident control of enterprises for finished products – were already shown in the first quarter of 2015. The flexible organization of the business surveys of the IEP allows one to directly measure many of the actual phenomena that are relevant at the present stage, but which are not available to traditional statistics. In years 2012–2017, the results of IEP surveys showed a low demand for devaluation of the ruble as a protective measure for the domestic producer in the context of a critical dependence of the industry on imported equipment, components and raw materials. For this reason, the strengthening of the ruble in February 2015 was considered by Russian enterprises to be the most important anti-crisis measure and theassessment of the actual impact of the ruble devaluation on demand, costs and investments in 2015–2017 were always negative.

To ensure that the outcome of the policy measures is in line with the initial expectations, many countries apply evidence based approach, in which policy decisions are made according to existing research. However, there arises a concern whether the information is correct and timely. Traditionally, governments employ the official statistics, but such data is not always relevant and useful for researchers. As an alternative for statistical observations, the administrative data could be used as well as other alternative information sources, the most advanced of which is the Big data. Especially due to the technological development the availability of such alternative sources is constantly growing.
The subject of the present paper is the international experience in using administrative data and some alternative information sources in the political decision-making process. The analysis shows that statistical offices in many countries employ administrative data reducing the cost of their own observations. Moreover there are centralized systems for accessing administrative data for research purposes. When it comes to alternative sources the role of geospatial data is noted, which is useful for urban planning, ecology or agriculture. The big data is not widely presented in public management yet; nevertheless it is the most promising information source. The result of current study could be applied in order to reform the statistical agency.

In this study, the authors’ research included the task to calculate the direct expenses of economic entities in the collection and provision of primary statistical data. The authors developed and tested the Methodology for estimating the costs associated with gathering data, completing, calculating and verifying values of indicators of reporting forms. The authors calculated the direct budgetary and commercial organizations’ costs in the social sphere related to collecting, providing forms of reporting and expenses of the government related to collecting and aggregating. The versatility of the Methodology allows to use it also for assessing respondents’ costs related to the collection of other types of accounting information.
We share approaches on the division of private and social costs and we assessed costs of opportunism of economic agents in the collection and provision of official statistical information, using the authors’ method of collecting and analyzing the respondents’ opinions on the Internet.
The authors propose a new approach to estimating information costs in value terms.

Information and communication technologies have been increasingly used to involve citizens in the government decision-making process. Given high costs associated with the development and maintenance of the electronic platforms, the eff ectiveness of such projects has not been frequently assessed. The article discusses theoretical approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of e-participation projects, suggests criteria and methodology for conducting such evaluations, and provides the results of “Activniy grazhdanin” [Active Citizen] platform evaluation based on the analysis of the reports published in 2014–2016. On the one hand the study attempts to respond to the public administration changes in Russia where the number of electronic platforms (and costs respectively) is increasing given the insufficient public importance of the topics under discussion (according to public interests). On the other hand, the study aims to develop a methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of the new form of public participation projects. The article concludes that in order for e-platforms to be an effective tool for government decision-making process the platforms not only have to consider advanced technical parameters and high level of public involvement, but also sufficient public interest of the topics under discussion. Perhaps, at a minimum, consideration of these three factors is required to ensure e-platforms’ effectiveness. This conclusion may provide the basis for developing an evaluation methodology applicable by the government. In this way the present research provides basis for local governments benchmarking, since there is no similar study concerning Russia.

The efficiency of public administration of social and economic development of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation (AZRF), as well as the stimulation of economically, socially and environmentally justified activities of investors and business entities in that zone, largely depend on the availability of specific regulatory and legal mechanisms. The creation of such mechanisms is determined by the «Strategy for the Development of the Russian Arctic and Ensuring National Security for the Period to 2020» approved by the President of the Russian Federation and governmental documents on the development of the Russian Arctic, but the fulfillment of this requirement proved to be a complex and non-trivial task.
The results of the research presented in this article are based on the analysis of the array of foreign and domestic laws and by-laws, as well as on the latest publications and authors’ own works on contemporary problems of the Arctic macroregion. It is shown that the main part of these problems is typical for all Russian territories and therefore is in the subject field of the all-Russian legal regulation. Thereby the advisability of developing and adopting a single federal law on the legal regulation of all Russian Arctic problems without exception is critically assessed.
Conceptual proposals on the structure and content of the draft law on the basic zones for the development of the Russian Arctic and on additional positions in the legislation regulating the conditions and organization of the vital activity of the indigenous population are substantiated.

The aim of the study is substantiation of the main aspects of the water economy complex management structure improvement by the introduction of the state and private partnership principles in the water economy system. The existent Ukrainian system of the water resources management is economically costly and has the unfavourable and unbalanced mechanism of distribution, protection and restoration of the water resources quality, from the point of view of the organizational management structure. The analysis of the existent experience in the field of water resources management in different countries of the world has proved that one of the most appropriate and efficient forms of the state and private partnership realization in the field of water economy of Ukraine are water consumers associations. However, taking into account the international experience, we conclude, that the main conditions of the state and private partnership introduction are determination of the state government agencies role in the irrigation systems and infrastructure management in the country, transfer of the state irrigation network,drainage and infrastructure objects to the water users associations, development of the legislative and methodological support to form associations, and whereas a non-profit position of the associations in the legislative system of the country is quite important, it should be clearly and exactly determined by the legislation. Improvement of the management system by the introduction of the state and private partnership in the water economy complex of Ukraine is impossible without substantiation of the main stages in modernization and renovation of the branch activity. An important condition of the process is gradual and tolerant share of the water resources management functions and water economy and melioration systems exploration between the State agency of water resources of Ukraine, regional management bodies and water users associations at the basis of the state and private partnership principles.

The paper deals with the issue of the quality control over experts’ activities, the results of which are used for public administration purposes. The case in focus is the state control over temporary disability examination in the Russian Federation. This patient’s health evaluation provides the cause for sick leaves and ensures the functioning of the mandatory social insurance system. The study aims to reconstruct routine procedures and practices of external control over this medical activity and to reveal their inherent limitations. The empirical basis of analysis includes 31 semi-structured interviews with healthcare professionals and inspectors, laws and regulations of the Russian Federation, and accessible statistical data on the state inspections of medical organizations. It was revealed that in this case the initial complexity of assessing the expert’s service by its customer is complemented by the lack of clear rules of expertise, the separation of control authority between different state bodies, the purely documentary nature of inspections, as well as severe but hardly applied sanctions for low-quality temporary disability examination. The main problem is that the external control system, focused on verifying the correctness of filling out the documentation, cannot track whether all patients with sick leaves were indeed incapable of working and the insured events did take place.