Cut to the Ministry of Education and Science?

There was information about multi-million tenders for the development of documentation for organizations subordinate to FASO

On December 17, an announcement “On the start of competitive selection for the implementation of projects in the interests of the Department of Science and Technology” was published on the website of state assignments. 11 titles of competitive development and research projects were proposed for a total of 117 million rubles.

Organizations under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education and Science can participate in competitions. Acceptance of applications ends on December 27, by this date not only the formal parts of the application must be submitted - a notification, a list of participants, lists of their publications, but also the "Project Implementation Plan", "Project Justification".

This in itself can no longer be alarming. The end of the year, everyone is finishing their reports, feverishly completing something, the holidays are on the nose, and then suddenly you need to make a decision on participation in the competition in 10 days, form a team of performers, write an implementation plan and justification, force each of the performers to write a bibliographic certificate about themselves (well, each of us has such a certificate for the previous year, but it needs to be updated, brought into the required format). In 10 days, find all the people who may be on business trips or vacations, get their live signatures on paper. And also put all the necessary seals and approvals in the contractor's organization.

Further, the commission, the composition of which is not published (in any case, I could not find it), will select the winner from these applications.

Do you, dear reader, really believe that a clear application for spending 25 million rubles of state money can be written, agreed with the authorities and co-executors and completed in 10 days? Even if you have been sitting and waiting for the last 5 years for some grant giver to offer you 8 million rubles to write a paper on the topic “Analysis of the state and prospects for the development of scientific instrumentation in the Russian Federation”.

I have reasonable doubts that these competitions were offered with the intention of holding a fair competition. The combination of large amounts of expenses, highly specialized topics, non-trivial bureaucratic procedure for preparing and submitting documents, and a ridiculous time limit of 10 days very clearly allude to the cutting nature of this competition. This is a classic example of contests that the right people were apparently told about in advance. Perhaps some applicants will play the role of spoilers - because otherwise the FAS may get angry.

And now let's get into the topics of these contests.

“Development of the concept of digital platforms for research and development, as well as the development and approval of a long-term program for their creation and implementation in the network of scientific, educational organizations and technology companies in the Russian Federation” will cost taxpayers 5 million rubles. “Development of proposals for improving the system of attracting talented youth to science, engineering, technological entrepreneurship, taking into account world experience. Implementation of the functions of the operator of the "road map" for the development of technological entrepreneurship "(grammar saved - A.Z.) - 15 million rubles.

Please note: we are not talking about the fact that some new software product is being developed, a calculation, a database or an experimental setup would be done. It is about writing and transposing pieces of paper: programs, concepts, reports, proposals, as follows from the "expected results" of the competition. All these competitions involve obtaining results in the form of “Analytical and methodological support...”, “methodological support” (does the well-known domestic methodologist Kiriyenko participate in the competition?), “Development of proposals for improving legislation”. Who will read these pieces of paper, which by weight will be more expensive than gold? And where could the general public get acquainted with these reports, which will cost tens of millions of rubles from the treasury.

Where the ears grow from this whole set of “competitions” is easy to understand. The most expensive competition - for 25 million rubles - is formulated as "Analytical and organizational support for the implementation of the Strategy for Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation ...".

What is the Strategy? The key concept of this document is the so-called “big challenges” (I apologize to readers for the obvious tracing paper from English, but you can’t throw out a word from official paper, even if its authors do not fully speak Russian) - “a set of problems that objectively requires a reaction from the state threats and opportunities whose complexity and scale are such that they cannot be addressed, eliminated or realized solely by increasing resources. Further, the Strategy introduces the concept of "priorities of scientific and technological development" - these are "the most important areas of scientific and technological development of the state, within which technologies are created and used, solutions are implemented that most effectively respond to big challenges." Translating from bureaucratic newspeak into human language, this means: there are enemies all around, so science should not work to understand the world, but technology should work to increase the comfort of life. Both science and technology should serve, as the Strategy says, to counter "technogenic, biogenic, socio-cultural threats, terrorism and ideological extremism, as well as cyber threats." Detailing these threats in the Strategy - "... the threat of loss of the national and cultural identity of Russian citizens), ... and strengthening their relationship with internal threats to national security" - smacks of paranoia and medieval obscurantism, and is poorly associated with development, even scientific, at least technological, but those who still sometimes watch TV told me that now this kind of paranoid complexes have become almost the only true teaching.

In practice, for Russian scientists, the Strategy turns into support for "selected areas of scientific and technological development" and neglect of everything else that is done in science. Chosen by whom? The wisest, most enlightened officials of the Ministry of Education and Science (the very one where false dissertations were protected for $250 million a year, according to our most modest estimates) and the Presidential Administration. And within the framework of this concept, just any cut is not only justified, but also the only legal one. The authorities, in their infinite wisdom, have already seen where science will go, and waved their hand: run there! And they ran.