The conference heard many proposals for improving the "road map". Which ones is ASI ready to listen to?

- The draft "road map" is a fairly extensive document, in which we tried, together with our fellow developers, to take into account all the proposals of experts and the professional community. The conference convinced us even more of the need for the changes we propose. Of course, we will definitely try to take into account a number of proposals made by conference participants - for example, building a system for assessing the quality of social services (no matter whether by state or non-state enterprises), describing and replicating existing cases in the regions.

At what stage is the preparation of the "map" now? When is it planned to submit it to the supervisory board?

- We have compiled all the proposals from experts and the professional community, and held a series of public discussions. Now, having received additional comments and proposals, we plan to take them into account and send the project for approval by federal agencies. I think this will be a difficult stage and, probably, more than one iteration of approval. As soon as we come to a more or less agreed version, we will submit the draft "road map" for approval and endorsement by the agency's supervisory board headed by President Vladimir Putin. We plan to do this in the first quarter of 2014.

Are there any comments from departments? From which ones and what kind of comments are they?

- As I said, we are yet to receive official approval from the departments. Following the conference, we received a number of comments and proposals from the Ministry of Finance. Both on the specification of individual events of the "map" and on the need to provide more detailed justifications for certain changes, especially in terms of the redistribution of budget funds and the provision of tax benefits. But this is an objective process, and we are very grateful to the Ministry for its active participation. It is better for us to secure conceptual support from the Ministry of Finance, as they say, "on the shore."

The "map" provides for pilot projects for the transfer of state social institutions to business ownership. Is there already an understanding of which regions these pilots are possible in and what they will be?

- It is difficult to name a list of pilots at this point. I think, including at the suggestion of the Ministry of Finance, we will send the "road map" for approval to a number of subjects of the Russian Federation. A number of subjects are already emerging that actively want to change something in the social sphere and expand the non-governmental sector, some of them are participating in the development of the "road map" - these are, of course, Moscow, Moscow Region, Perm Region, Bashkortostan, Khabarovsk Region, Ulyanovsk Region and many others.

I would like to draw attention to the fact that in this section of the "road map", where we talk about the need to conduct pilot projects to transfer social facilities to management, we also talk about pilots that can be conducted by companies with state participation and state corporations. The President has long been talking about the need to transfer or sell non-core assets of state enterprises. In our opinion, the transfer to management of clinics, kindergartens, camps and other social infrastructure facilities that are on the balance sheet of state companies and are non-core assets for such companies falls entirely within this priority.

There is a lot of talk about the problems of preschool education now. What do you think is the best way to solve this problem: should the state build more kindergartens or should it purchase the service?

- Good question. ASI together with more than 15 regions is implementing a model program for the development of the non-state sector of preschool education. It is a set of measures that we recommended the regions to implement. Summing up some results, this fall we realized that the regions prefer to build new preschool educational institutions rather than purchase the service. Although the successful implementation of the "Building Garden" project in the Samara and Moscow regions shows that it can be cheaper to do it differently: you can order the service from a private kindergarten or compensate it for a number of costs so that the parental fee in a state and private kindergarten is comparable.

Returning to the question. My opinion is that to solve the problem, we need to build new kindergartens, order the service from private individuals, and develop variable forms of preschool institutions. But when making decisions about building a new kindergarten, we need to weigh all the pros and cons from an economic point of view. In some cases, it is obviously easier and cheaper to order the service from a private individual and specify the rules of work and conditions in the contract with them than to spend a large amount of budget money on new construction. In our opinion, this principle should be followed not only to solve problems with kindergartens, but in many areas of the social sphere.

Blitz Interview: Sometimes It's Better to Buy a Service