The tentacle of the president

In Russia, another “crutch” is being introduced to manage regions

In March of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the Government of the Russian Federation instructed to create a structure entitled “Center for Management of Regions” (CUR). Its purpose is stated very streamlined - monitoring regional problems, assistance in solving them and preventing their appearance in the future.

In fact, this turns into another tool to dismantle the federal structure of Russia.

Moscow is not the first to be an advanced center for digitizing political practices that increase the predictability and controllability of political processes - it is enough to recall the electronic voting system.

Now, having taken as the basis of the Dobrodel and Active Citizen system, the methods and experience of the Almighty Department of Information Technologies of Moscow and the Presidential Administration, it is supposed to install a certain structure on each region of the immense homeland, which will be declared “effective work of the regional authorities”. For this, the non-profit organization Dialogue Regions has already been registered, a special for “incident-management” has been developed and, of course, funding has been received.

The only problem is that technology in itself is never progress.

You need to watch how these technologies are used by people and for what purpose: the thought in itself is so obvious that they always forget about it. After all, if the purpose of the appearance of the Tsura is to increase the efficiency of regional authorities, it turns out that the federal center is trying to achieve controllability due to the simple duplication of existing regional management systems.

The regional governments have a huge apparatus for monitoring and analysis of the media and social networks, the management of citizens' appeals, the Ministry of Interaction with public organizations and a lot of such committees and subcommittee. All these people seem to be in positions to “monitor regional problems, assistance in solving them and preventing their appearance in the future.”

What is characteristic, each mayor of a more or less developed city has something similar, especially if it is a regional center. Envoyies, which, in theory, also monitor, also analyze and react, are also not gone anywhere. Back in 2005, the plenipotentiary in the Siberian Federal District Anatoly Kvashnin, known for his eloquence, called his apparatus "tentacles of the president." And do not forget about the presence of various kinds of organizations like the Fund for the Development of Civil Society that have regional representative offices: they write analytical notes, raise problems.

That is, even those who, according to the staffing, should deal with the problems of citizens in the field, such as the timely removal of garbage and the location of holes in the yards - at least sore, and even voluntary non -profit assistants. All of them receive good salaries, occupy beautiful buildings in the city center. Nevertheless, another organization was needed, engaged in the same.

And how it will be realized, your humble servant who has the experience of the civil service has a clear idea. Representatives of the CUR will most likely oblige the regional officials themselves to fix and make problems in software, to report on the number of problems and their solutions, and then initiate on top of the regional authorities for the fact that local problems are poorly solved. So to speak, for acute and better handling, realizing the main principle of the federal center in relation to the regions: the maximum authority in the absence of responsibility. Thus, the federal center, supposedly wanting to improve the feedback and controllability of the regions, in fact, builds another system of unitarization of the country, creating a parallel regional management system.

Programmers call this method of improving “put crutches”, and, as a rule, crutches are not put from a good life.

The British anthropologist David Graber, unfortunately, has recently left this world, in his last work Bullshit Job (on the Russian book it was published as “delusional work”) said that “crutches” are needed to compensate for the damage from poorly working project management systems (both human and automated). Tsuras are another crutch in order to compensate for the complexity of managing the country in which federal instruments are dismantled in one form or another, and unitary tools cannot cope.

If we recall the classics of the genre of “Notes of the federalist”, the collective work of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, a recipe for managing a large country, so that no one can usurp power, as follows: the separation of branches of government, separation of power levels and a branched system of local elections as a tool of representative democracy. And no control centers, analysis and monitoring from the “Washington regional committee” are needed, everything is decided differently. If the mayor poorly removes garbage, residents of the city do not choose it for the next period. If the governor has failed in the region of the healthcare system, the state residents do not choose it for the next term.

If this has led to great consequences, you can initiate a parliamentary investigation from the legislative branch of the authorities and call the summons to the court.

We see, as methodically, step by step by step the leadership of the Russian Federation does everything exactly the opposite.

The separation of powers in Russia has been figured out for a long time, the parliament ceased to be a place for the discussion in the fat zero. The local election system was carefully processed with a file, establishing certain forms of control: cancellation of direct elections of mayors, coordination of governors, party barriers and much more. Now, after amendments to the Constitution, when the very mysterious system of a single public government appeared, we can say that the levels of power are taken seriously. And the creation of such a digital control committee is such a signal that there will be many more the “tentacles of the president”.

After all, it is somehow necessary to solve problems in which the appointed Governors “Varangians” cannot be understood, which mayor deprived of budgets cannot cope with the local deputies deprived of powers.

The main thing is that there is enough money for everyone.