Translated material
Performance test
The Federal Defense Procurement Service will prepare a blacklist of industry enterprises
The Federal Service for Defense Ordering (FSZ) finally got back on its feet this year, and next year it intends to restore order in such a monetary area as the production of weapons and military equipment. The history of the creation of the service is very confusing . First, in 2003, the State Committee for Defense Orders appeared. The first head of the new structure, Army General Vladimir Matyukhin, the former head of FAPSI, did not show himself in any way. The committee existed for exactly a year and was transformed into a federal service. Andrei Belyaninov, who came from the more than successful Rosoboronexport, had his hands tied by powerful opponents in power, and his plans remained on paper. Apparently, the state itself did not really need another fiscal department - even the Regulations on the Social Security Fund were approved only in February 2005.The main function of the service today is control and supervision of the expenditure of budget funds allocated for the state defense order (SDO). In more detail, this is control over the placement and implementation of state orders, control over pricing. Therefore, the new head of the Federal Service for Defense Procurement, Colonel General Sergei Mayev , formerly the head of the Main Armored Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, summing up the results of the year, refers to the number of inspections (about 300) and the number of inspected government customers (about 1000 enterprises). Based on the results of the inspections, more than a thousand orders were sent to eliminate deficiencies. But the main result, Mr. Mayev believes, is that the service has defined itself as a control body and has become a good assistant to the military-industrial commission under the Russian government.
The service has finally become in demand. Its employees especially felt this with the commencement (January 1, 2006) of Federal Law No. 94 “On placing orders for the supply of goods, performance of work, and provision of services for government needs,” which assigned several new functions to the service. This is a consideration of complaints from subjects of state defense procurement - customers and performers. “There are more and more complaints,” General Mayev complained. Apparently, because no one had dealt with these problems before. Another new task is to consider applications for competitions, including closed ones. The law is difficult to understand, admits Sergei Mayev. Now many amendments are being prepared, only from the Federal Social Security Service - on seven pages.
Over the course of a year and a half of meaningful work, the service’s structure has been formed. Today this department employs 300 people, divided into ten departments. Some of them oversee the production of weapons and military equipment in the following areas: air, ground, sea, missiles and space. There is a department for checking the products of the rear. This year, a department was launched to verify the execution of state defense orders in capital construction. Work is being checked within the framework of federal target programs, including the transition to a contract method of recruiting the army, the development of the state border, and the construction of new bases for the Black Sea Fleet. Next year it is planned to create six territorial bodies - according to the number of presidential offices, except for the Central Federal District.
Detractors joke: the nature of the service’s work is such that it’s time to create another department - control over controllers, in order to warn them against temptations. There is not a meeting at which General Mayev does not warn his subordinates: God forbid you lobby someone or receive compensation for your work. True, no such cases have been identified so far.
In 2007, the service intends to move from small one-time audits of individual enterprises to large comprehensive audits of customers and performers. Particular attention will be paid to pricing, relationships between the parent company and co-executors, and the organization of financing of state defense orders. A black list of military-industrial complex enterprises that violate technical standards when implementing the state defense order will finally be compiled. Officially, federal legislation provides for maintaining a “register of unscrupulous suppliers.” It is entrusted to the Federal Social Security Service. There are no regulations for maintaining the register yet, but the service has already determined who will do this, and the first candidates for the blacklist have been identified. It will be finalized based on the results of the implementation of the state defense order for 2006 - approximately by the end of January next. General Mayev says there may be two enterprises on the list, or maybe seven. He believes that there is a possibility that a register of unscrupulous customers will appear, especially for logistics products. In this area, both manufacturers and customers create conditions that make it very difficult to fulfill state defense orders.
If there are violators of standards, then there must be standards themselves. The system of standards that existed in the Soviet Union has been virtually destroyed. But today a special department of the service is developing new standards. However, so far there are no measures to influence producers of low-quality products. Both because of the lack of standards, and because in the defense industry, especially with the advent of holding companies, there are many monopolists - no matter what the monopolist issues outright, he will still receive a government order for the next year, since there is no one else to give it to. The register of unscrupulous suppliers will be the first step towards influencing monopolists.
There was a similar story with the register of contracts, for which the government did not issue regulations for a long time. Then FSZ specialists presented to Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov their internal regulatory documents confirming that the service could maintain such a register. Having received the blessing of the Deputy Prime Minister, the service maintained such a register independently for six months, until a government decree appeared. And in order to maintain competition in the holdings, General Mayev believes, it is necessary to deprive the management company of the right to take on the responsibilities of executing government orders - let this be done by specific enterprises of a vertically integrated structure.
The formation of a new federal procurement agency next year will make adjustments to the work of the service. A decree on this structure is expected before the end of 2006. It is expected that the agency will carry out technical work on placing state defense orders - holding competitions and concluding contracts. Whether the customer will delegate the right to manage money to the new agency is still an open question. The algorithm of actions of this department has yet to be worked out by the government. But one way or another, the new agency is already called the internal “Rosoboronexport”.
By November of each year, there remains, as a rule, about 3-5 billion rubles of unused funds from state defense orders. And every year they urgently organized work to use this money. This year the balance is also large. One can only dream of the rhythmic execution of the State Defense Order. And we will have to do this next year. The task is all the more urgent since the state defense order in monetary terms increases annually by a third. And Sergey Mayev intends to eliminate the humiliating dictate of the customer over the contractor.