Russia—Administrative Reform: Improving Public Sector Finance, Expenditure, and Delivery of Services

The Russian government acknowledges that administrative reform, civil service reform, and reform of the budget system is imperative to maintain its economic growth momentum. Working for the European Commission’s Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States program, three DAI Europe-led projects helped Russia improve its public sector operations. The projects introduced European experience and best practice in these areas, in line with common standards as established for a European Administrative Space, and adapted European Union experience and best practice to specific Russian circumstances. Following are the projects and some of their accomplishments.

Administrative Reform II–Improvement of Public Expenditure Management (2005–2007) advised on reforming the state budget. After managing the State Budget Reform project from 2003 to 2005, DAI worked closely with the Government of Russia to:

• Strengthen the principles of mid-term performance-oriented budgeting in the Ministry of Finance and the line ministries.
• Improve reporting requirements, performance assessment, and control systems.
• Advise on modernizing control and audit systems, designing systems of internal control, and improving access to information about the budget process and reforms.

Management of Sub-National Public Finance (2006–2008) improved the use of public finances at the subnational level by:

• Introducing modern budgeting techniques and performance-oriented budgeting.
• Establishing a public expenditure management system and operational tools for effective financial programming, accounting, and monitoring and evaluation.
• Disseminating best practices to other regions and municipalities through a train-the-trainer process and replication of the model.

Public Sector Institutional Reform Project (2005–2007) created regulations and implementation mechanisms for selected state ministries, agencies, and services. The project:

• Defined and designed standards for selected state services, as well as a system of quality assessment and a mid-term benchmarking system.
• Devised a system of flexible indicators to measure state performance for selected departments (internal indicators) and the delivery of state services (external indicators).
• Developed a system of e-government, compatible with the existing Russian programme “e-Russia” and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development guidelines.