Translated material
Medvedev gave the go-ahead
On November 1, 2012, the Russian government adopted Resolution No. 1114 with the boring title “On Amendments to Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation of April 27, 2005 No. 260” [1]. This resolution should solve problems with the transfer of money from presidential grants for young scientists, as well as leading scientific schools, to organizations that are not subordinate to the Ministry of Education and Science - institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, other state academies of sciences, Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University, etc. Without such a resolution, the Ministry of Education and Science could not transfer funds to these organizations.
After the resolution is adopted, the Ministry of Education and Science will be able to transfer the funds allocated for the grant to the main manager of budget funds, which is in charge of the organization where the winner of the competition - a young scientist - works (that is, the Russian Academy of Sciences - for the Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences), and after that the money will reach the recipient. In addition, the deadline for submitting reports on presidential grants was postponed - from November 20 (when many would not have seen the money yet) to December 25.
This particular problem, albeit very late, has been resolved, although there is still the question of when exactly the money will arrive and how the recipients will spend it. However, it is obvious that this year the problem of timely transfer of funds for projects in general has become especially acute. There are many reasons for this - starting from the inadequacy of budget legislation in relation to the grant sector, and ending, to put it mildly, with the suboptimal actions of various government agencies.
The fact that funding for the main grants of scientific foundations no longer comes in April - May, as before, but in July - August is an even lesser evil. Since the budget funding of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Russian Humanitarian Foundation was increased only in May, competitions for youth projects were held in the summer, and their results were summed up in September - October. Taking into account the need to obtain a state registration number and only then sign individual tripartite agreements, the winners will receive money only in the last two months of the year. For many of them, the prospect of starting to write a report without receiving any money is probably quite real.
Many winners of this year’s Federal Targeted Program “Personnel” competitions found themselves in approximately the same situation. Those competitions whose results were announced in September - October. Taking into account the fact that for organizations that are not directly subordinate to the Ministry of Education and Science, it is also necessary to conclude agreements between three parties - the Ministry of Education and Science, the organization itself, and the main manager of budget funds to which this organization reports - funding for many grants from the Federal Target Program "Personnel" at Moscow State University, institutes RAS, etc. It hasn’t arrived yet, but the completion date for the stage is already close.
In general, the need to solve problems that have been obvious for many years - untimely transfer of funding for projects, the inability for the grant recipient to transfer part of the received funding to the next year (if the project continues) - should become obvious, I would like to believe, not only to scientists, but also to officials.
Well . Oh .