On Friday, a department of civil service and personnel was created in the government apparatus. It was headed by Ivan Lobanov, a fellow countryman and long-time associate of the chief of staff of Vyacheslav Volodin: he was a United Russia deputy of the State Duma from the Saratov region. According to Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the department will deal with the 20% reduction of the White House staff announced in January and the upgrading of the qualifications of those who remain. Another area of activity is the fight against corruption, checking the declarations of government officials. According to another government official, this department will also support the work of the commission on administrative reform (previously, the Ministry of Economic Development was responsible for this).

Administrative reform has been going on almost without interruption since 2003, the last serious step was the adoption of the law on public services, reminds member of the presidential commission on modernization Alexander Auzan. Now the most important thing is to establish monitoring of the implementation of standards of service provision to the population by officials, which Dmitry Medvedev drew attention to in his address. According to the expert, increasing pressure on the bureaucracy may become one of the main topics in the pre-election year.

The department will coordinate its personnel activities with the organizers of the United Russia party project "Personnel Reserve - Professional Team of the Country," Peskov confirmed. "This will help mobilize United Russia members for the elections," the high-ranking party member is confident. In his opinion, the fact that this work will be done by Volodin, who headed the party's General Council before joining the government, will serve as an additional guarantee. Lobanov will remain on the General Council of United Russia, which he joined when he was the party curator for the regions of the Central District.

It is possible that the department's real role in the pre-election year will be somewhat broader than officially announced, according to a person close to the presidential administration. He recalled that the arrival of politician Volodin in the government was linked to the fact that he would be entrusted with coordinating the prime minister's activities during the federal elections of 2011-2012. For these same purposes, according to the government official, it is also planned to create conditions for interaction between the prime minister's office and the regions.

Volodin was brought into the government exclusively for the purposes of the Duma and presidential campaigns, says political scientist Yevgeny Minchenko. It is natural that now all the levers of influence on the federal and regional bureaucracy are being transferred to him: the possibility of dismissal, promotion, restructuring.

Personnel officer Volodin