Issue 2019 no2 contents:

The problem of improving indicative quality assessment of governance is explored. The reasons for certain difficulties in elaboration and implementation of the indicative assessment, and for the lack of integrated theoretical foundations of such evaluations, are given. The outlines of critics for quality assessment of governance based on data analysis are discussed; the gaps and mistakes of these critics are highlighted.
On the ground of the examples of some positive and most elaborated practices of countries’ indicative assessment, the authors came to a conclusion that currently there are still significant shortcomings in the selection of indexes. Some statistical instruments for improvement of the indexes selection are introduced. The thesis of the article is that the implementation of these instruments enables the elimination of the duplicate indexes. The latter is shown through the example of WGI. In conclusion of the article, the possibility to create the unifi ed instrumental paradigm of “result-oriented state” based on the statistical instruments of quality assessment of governance relied on data analysis is considered.

Evaluation of parameters of government institutions rule-making activity is a relatively new and promising approach to assessing the scale of government intervention in the economy. Indicators of the volume and rigidity of the regulatory framework are used for this purpose. The latter are formed using Big data and linguistic analysis methods with respect to a set of regulatory documents.
Database of official documents adopted in the period 1991–2018 (decrees of the President of the Russian Federation, orders and resolutions of the Government of the Russian Federation, orders of federal executive bodies, federal laws), was gathered which allowed to characterize the features and stages of development of the regulatory model in Russia, as well as to identify the factors of rule-making activity at the level of branches of the Russian economy.
The research results show that despite the stabilization of the rule-making activity dynamics after a period of active regulatory expansion (2004–2015), the level of regulatory framework rigidity in Russia remains high. The distribution of normative acts in the space of the activities of the OKVED classifier allowed using econometric methods to evaluate the theoretical model of regulatory activity at the sectoral level of the economy. Empirical estimates show that the public sector is regulated more intensively than the private sector. In addition, higher regulatory activity is observed in industries producing a greater amount of the added value. In turn, lower regulatory activity and lower regulatory rigidity characterize industries with a higher level of GVA per firm. Regulatory control and direct control of state property are interchangeable mechanisms for managing sectors of the Russian economy.

The reform of inspection and regulatory enforcement activities aims at improving public safety, i.e. life, health, property, lawful rights and interests, against a variety of risks. The key reform indicators include radical reduction in both frequency and scale of damage-related accidents. Despite the fact that the reform has been ongoing for a number of years, yet no systematic independent evaluation of its efficiency and impact on the level of public safety risks has been implemented.
This article presents the outcomes of representative sociological public surveys of the efficiency of inspection and regulatory enforcement activities undertaken in 2018 and 2019. The survey data suggests that despite some positive dynamics only 34.3 percent of respondents rate their safety against major types of risks as adequate. Most citizens note no changes in the public safety against major types of risks in the past two years. At the same time the percentage of citizens noting that state control and supervision are an important factor for ensuring public safety has dropped. The number of respondents applying to state control and supervision authorities for protection against risks to life, health, property and the like has also declined.
Overall, from the public viewpoint, inspection and regulatory enforcement reform has not yet resulted in significant reduction of risks to public safety. The article concludes with the recommendations on improving the reform implementation based on citizen perceptions.

In the most of the developed countries digital transformation of public administration is rather slow; the development is far behind of the officially defined and announced schedules. In this regard, the assessment of the effectiveness of digital management becomes particularly relevant. The authors note that the effect of digitalization of public administration is often identified with improving its quality and reducing costs. However, most of the research is aimed at assessing the quality of digitalization, while the issue of studying the cost of digitalization and minimizing costs has not been given due attention. The study proposes the author’s model of the analysis of digital public administration effectiveness, based mainly on the criteria of minimizing the costs associated with the introduction of digital services. To demonstrate the operational capabilities of the author’s model of measuring the digitalization of the public sector, the calculations of the cost coefficient of digital services and the utility coefficient of public digital services are given. It is assumed that a suggested model will make it possible to determine the technological feasibility of digital solutions in the system of digital government and infrastructure readiness for the digitalization of public administration; evaluation of subjective parameters of digitalization and determination of the economic feasibility of the introduction of digital services in the public sector. The proposed methodology can be applied on a regular basis both at the regional and national level to assess the dynamics and statistical effectiveness of the implemented digital platforms and services, launch a single information database for ministries and departments; rate and rank regions within the framework of the multifactor measurement, as well as to assess the level of public support for the policy of digitalization of public administration (establishing feedback «consumer of digital services – state»), etc.

The following paper investigates the extent to which the regional programs of sustainable development in rural areas in Russia comply with the Federal program of rural development for years 2013-2020 (FCP URST). For this, we analyze 81 regional programs. The hypothesis of the research is that Russian legislative system provides the necessary juridical cornerstone for the processes of sustainable development in rural territories in Russia, in agricultural production, and improves the attractiveness of the rural life. In attempts to prove the hypothesis we found some inconsistencies in the legislative system: the regions spontaneously interpret the term “rural areas”, fail to pursue the improvement of statistical observation system in rural territories. In many regional projects the goals and objectives of the Federal program are not fully established, the target indicators are violated, and the list of actions mismatch the ones recommended at the Federal level. Thus, our analysis shows that regular changes in federal and regional laws do not improve the quality of rural life as much as they were expected. In order to improve the efficiency of the regional programs we recommend that priority goals should be chosen not by civil servants, but with rural administration and participation of local people. We suggest developing a federal template for rural laws in the sphere of sustainable development on the regional level. We also recommend to set the minimum goals and target indicators which are a “must do” in order to meet the federal criteria of program accomplishment. We recommend to define the criteria of sustainability (or opposite – variability), and estimate the level of accomplishment of sustainable rural development programs by this variable. 

The article considers the impact of professional certifi cation of health workers on their motivation to work. The research is based on the empirical data from two sociological polls of health workers in 2014 and 2018. Methods of the cross tabulation, correlation and cluster analysis are applied to examine the obtained data.
The study has shown that for most of doctors and nurses the results of certification do not have a positive impact on changes in their motivation to work. Health workers  do not consider exacting recertification of employees as an incentive to the professional growth and increase in labor contribution. However, there is an impact of certification on motivation to work for those physicians who following the results of certification had positive changes either in the nature of work or in the level of its remuneration.
According to the majority of medical personnel, the main way of increase in objectivity of certification has to be a confi rmation of professional skills by certificates on mastering modern methods of medical care. The other part of medical personnel gives a priority to the independent check of test tasks.
It is relevant to raise the issue of the differentiation of institutional design of two different functions that certification performs for different groups of doctors: a) confirming the already obtained professional status by maintaining the previously assigned professional category, b) increasing their status by assigning a new professional category.

The paper discusses the development of democratic practices in Kazakhstan through the case study of self-managed condominiums. Incessant problems in the management of jointly owned common areas in apartment buildings, which remain unsolved under the existing forms of management, naturally arouse public interest in alternative approaches.
One of these approaches is self-management. The author analyzes the problems and achievements of self-management in Kazakhstan through the case study of a separate house, noting the key role of the state in creating conditions for the development of selfmanagement.
The main conclusion of the paper is that the position of state bodies with regard to self-management of condominiums is twofold: at the strategic/project level, the state supports self-management, at the operational level it is still not ready to rely on long-term decisions.

The study explores financing of infrastructure projects using municipal bonds. The problems of the municipal infrastructure deficit (taking into account the territorial conditions of Russia – first of all, its expanse and spatial disproportionality) – are of particular importance. Only low-category repair of road networks and infra-objects was carried out in this area, which did not at all contribute to the improvement of the living environment. The coordinated and progressive development of the municipal infrastructure not only contributes to the retention of the local population, but also increases the investment and migration attractiveness of the territories. To this end, the article describes a set of measures designed to enhance the process of attracting investments in infrastructure at the municipal level using bonds. Parameters of securities issues of concessionaires were studied, experience in managing municipalities with securities as an element of debt policy was analyzed. Three types of municipal infrastructure bonds are presented, with options for their release schemes, as well as the scheme for accumulating and redistributing revenues from issuing bonds of an infrastructure municipal project (through the case study of application of life cycle contract by the Infrastructure Development Bank). A project for the launch and implementation of the investment mechanism has been developed.