Federal Target Program "Personnel" - through thorns to lots

The federal target program “Scientific and scientific-pedagogical personnel of innovative Russia”, designed for 2009-2013, begins to work. What and how will be done within the framework of this program is the subject of our note. We hope that it will help those who want to participate in competitions.

The first mention of the need to prepare a federal target program (FTP) aimed at training scientific personnel appeared in official documents back in 2002. However, work on the FTP actually began only in the fall of 2006, and at the end of January 2007, the Interdepartmental Working Group presented Federal Targeted Program project for the public. Another year and a half passed before the program was adopted by the government. The goal of the program is “to create conditions for the effective reproduction of scientific and scientific-pedagogical personnel and the retention of young people in the field of science, education and high technology, preserving the continuity of generations in science and education” [1]. Before the sequestration, it was planned to allocate more than 80 billion rubles for the Program. from the federal budget. The program is divided into “directions”; they, in turn, are divided into “events”, within the framework of which certain types of competitions will be held; for example, activity 1.1. provides for “Conducting scientific research by teams of scientific and educational centers.” The state customers for the Program (government bodies responsible for the implementation of the Program) will be two federal agencies - Rosnauka and Rosobrazovanie; Each agency will conduct its own “events.” Currently, agencies have already created websites dedicated to the Federal Target Program “Personnel” [2]; there you can find out what activities of the Program are supervised by agencies, what competitions have been announced, etc. Technical support for competitions, for which several thousand applications will be submitted annually, will be carried out not by the Directorate of the Program, as was the case in the Federal Center for Science and Technology and the Federal Targeted Program for Research and Development, but by specialized organizations whose selection is carried out within the framework of competitions for “organizational and technical support of competitive procedures.” As part of the Federal Target Program “Personnel”, it is planned to hold a number of mass competitions for three-year projects: – support for research conducted by teams of scientific and educational centers (up to 5 million rubles annually); – support for research conducted by groups led by doctors of science (up to 2 million rubles annually) and candidates of science (up to 1.5 million rubles annually); – support for research by young candidates of science (up to 1 million rubles annually) as part of the REC; as well as a number of mass competitions for two-year projects: – support for research by teams led by invited researchers (up to 2 million rubles annually); – support for research by graduate students (up to 0.5 million rubles annually) as part of the REC. In addition, it is planned to allocate money for holding Russian and international conferences, schools, competitions, olympiads, etc. It is envisaged that annually, within the framework of the Federal Target Program “Personnel,” up to 450 research and educational centers (RECs) and up to 500 groups led by doctors and candidates of science will receive support. During the duration of the Program, up to 1,350 RECs and one and a half thousand groups led by candidates and doctors of science will be supported. Approximately 40% of supported projects will be in the natural and technical sciences, 10% in the humanities, and another 10% will be allocated “in the interests of developing high-tech sectors of the economy.” Quotas allocated for a particular area of ​​science are determined in advance (this is one of the consequences of the fact that the Program is regulated by the law on public procurement, which we will discuss below). They can be found on the Program website [3]. The most expensive activity of the Program is REC competitions (they have already been announced). According to the definition of the Program, a scientific and educational center is understood as a structural unit (part of a structural unit or a set of structural units) of a scientific, research and production organization or higher educational institution, carrying out research in a general scientific direction, training personnel of the highest scientific qualifications on the basis of the Regulations on scientific -an educational center approved by the head of the organization. Within the framework of REC projects, the simultaneous participation of at least 2 doctors of science, 3 young candidates of science, 3 graduate students and 4 students is required. REC projects provide for a mandatory condition for attracting extra-budgetary funds in the amount of at least 20% of what the applicant requests from the budget. In principle, only funds that do not come from the state budget are considered off-budget: business agreements with companies, foreign grants and grants from non-state foundations, tuition fees from students, etc. Accordingly, RFBR grants and funds from RAS programs cannot be considered extra-budgetary funding (however, it cannot be ruled out that in reality, “at worst,” such money could be considered co-financing). For projects of groups led by doctors and candidates of science, extra-budgetary funding is not required. A special feature of the Federal Targeted Program competitions is that they are held within the framework of the law on public procurement (see the article “Government procurement in the law” in the last issue of TrV [4]), which will create a lot of problems for scientists. The very ideology of this law assumes that a specific product or service is being purchased, i.e. the customer knows what exactly he wants to receive. At the same time, the Program, in theory, assumes a normal competition of projects, when it is not known in advance what exactly is being “purchased” - the best proposals from applicants are being selected. Thus, the ideology of the law turns out to be opposite to the goals of the Program. The Public Procurement Law is aimed at saving public funds, so the contract price must be included among the criteria for evaluating an application. Of course, there are other criteria, but almost all of them are unsuitable for holding competitions designed to select the best scientific projects. There is only one exception - the criterion “quality of work and qualifications of the participant,” however, the law stipulates that the significance of this criterion cannot exceed 45%. Since the task of this Program is to support the best scientific teams, the creation of an assessment system at least minimally adapted to this task becomes a non-trivial task: using only substantive criteria and the contract price opens the door to dumping, when weak teams can significantly reduce the contract price and thereby be recognized winners of competitions... The published competition documentation (clause 7.3 “Procedure and methodology for evaluating and comparing applications for participation in the competition” of the “General Conditions of the Competition”) establishes the following rules for evaluating applications: – contract price – 35% (tender participant who offers the lowest price , will receive 35 points); – quality of work and qualifications of the competition participant – 45%; – work completion time – 20%. The last criterion, introduced to reduce the role of the contract price, does not make much sense; the applicant only needs to indicate that he will complete the work ten weeks earlier than stated in the documentation to receive 20 points for this criterion. More detailed information about the rules for evaluating applications can be found in the specified paragraph of the competition documentation (it must be borne in mind that within ten days after publication, the state customer has the right to make changes to the documentation). According to the law, it is permissible to submit only one application from an institution for one competition (if an institution receives two or more applications for a competition, then all of them will be withdrawn from the competition). That is, for example, the Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences can submit one application for the research competition of the REC in mathematics, one application for the research competition of groups led by doctors of science in mathematics, etc. Obviously, this condition disadvantages large specialized institutes and universities that have several groups working in the same area. Everyone who will participate in competitions will have to fill out a fairly large number of papers. The date by which the application must be submitted is indicated in the “Notice of an open competition.” The application must be submitted in a sealed envelope (this is also a legal requirement) to the address specified in the “Notice” (either brought in person or sent by mail) before the specified time.

1. The Federal Target Program “Personnel”, approved by the Government of the Russian Federation, can be found on the website of Rosnauka - http://fasi.gov.ru/fcp/npki/fzp.doc It must, however, be borne in mind that for a number of activities costs can be significantly reduced due to the crisis.
2. Website of the Federal Target Program “Personnel” of Rosnauka – http://fcpk.ru/ , website of the Federal Target Program “Personnel” of the Russian Education Agency – http://www.kadryedu.ru/ . kadryedu.ru/
3. Quotas for the REC competition in various areas of science - http://fcpk.ru/catalog.aspx?CatalogId=467
4. http://www.scientific.ru/journal/news/2009/0309/94fz.html

Evgeniy Onishchenko