They are cut off, and they grow: what will be the third in ten years an attempt to reduce the number of officials

On November 16, during a meeting with Deputy Prime Ministers, the head of government Mikhail Mishustin announced the next optimization of the state apparatus. It is planned to start it from the first of January next year and finish by April. The past reforms gave the opposite effect - the number of officials only increased. How they will reduce officials this time, why past reforms did not work and how many servants of the people in the country are in the MBH Media material.

Mishustin reform

At a meeting with Deputy Prime Ministers on Monday, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced “the need to optimize the management system”. According to him, about 20% of vacancies in various departments and ministries have now been opened. He instructed to reduce the staff of officials in the central devices by 5%, and in the territorial bodies of departments by 10%. “We will do this at the expense of mainly vacant positions,” Mishustin said .

On the portal of the State Service there are 3342 vacancies, both in open positions and for inclusion in the reserve. Among them, for example, there is a position of head of the Department of the Ministry of Property Relations of the Murmansk Region with a salary of 106 thousand rubles and a specialist of the first category in the financial department of the Kolchuginsky district of the Vladimir region with a salary of 6.4 to 7 thousand rubles per half -time. For a full applicant, he would receive a little higher than the MRO (it is approximately 12 thousand rubles).

It has already been

Over the past ten years, this is the third attempt to reduce the number of officials. In early 2011, then President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree on the reduction of civil servants of central devices and territorial divisions by 20%. So, by April 2011, ministries, federal services and departments were supposed to reduce the number of employees by 5%, in 2012 - by 10%, and by 2013 - by 20%.

At the end of December 2015, already as the prime minister, Medvedev again signed a decree on a reduction in the number of officials by 10%. Then they adopted a law that canceled the indexation of the salaries of civil servants, military and judges in 2016.

In September 2019, the Ministry of Finance again proposed to reduce the number of civil servants in the territorial authorities by 15%, and in the central apparatus - 10%. Actually, it was this proposal that Mishustin instructed to fulfill from January to April 2021.

How many officials in Russia

It is impossible to find out the exact number of civil servants in Russia from open data. According to the Ministry of Finance for 2019, we are talking about 2.4 million people. True, this number includes not only people who have the official status of a state or municipal employee, but also employees who are responsible for building buildings and security. If they subtract them, then the actual officials will be about two times less. So, in July last year, there were 603 thousand federal state civil servants, 252 thousand regional civil servants and 395 thousand municipal employees in local authorities.

The statistics of the Federal State Statistics Service, although it has been conducted over the past twenty years, does not allow us to make an unequivocal conclusion about a change in state people. The reason is the inclusion of new categories of employees in the calculation of new categories. For example, from 2009 to 2013, the total number of employees was reduced annually. However, in 2014, the number of employees of state bodies immediately increased by 664 thousand people, because employees of the territorial departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs began to be taken into account in statistics. In 2018, Rosstat decided to add another category - employees of the Russian Guard, but the total number of civil servants was still reduced by 17 thousand people compared to the previous year.

“This is a populist measure. Now, against the backdrop of a crisis, there is less money, and you have to do something, ”a researcher at the laboratory of comparative social studies under the Higher School of Higher School of Labor Maria Kravtsova suggested in a conversation with the MBH Media. She criticizes the methodology of calculating Rosstat. “If we do a statistical study and repeat it for several years, and we want these results (over the different years-“ MBH Media ”) we can then somehow compare, we cannot change the methodology,” the expert said, “if we do this, we are making minimal adjustments. There is no talk of it here. Such data, to which new ones are added throughout the entire period under consideration, previously not taken into account categories (for example, as happened with the addition of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2014 and the Russian Guard in 2018), it is impossible to compare with each other. It's just a game with statistics. ”

Why the abbreviations do not work

The head of the government needed to reduce the number of civil servants for several reasons, including a decrease in efficiency and increasing expenses for officials, according to political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin. At the same time, he noted that such reductions are ineffective.

“At all times, the vertical power with one hand produced officials, and fought with them with the other hand. An absolutely meaningless lesson, because the essence of the vertical is demonstrative management, ”he said“ MBH Media ”,“ respectively, for this, people who control, check, report, measure and double -check. ” Each department fights for increasing its prestige, competes with others and fights for expanding staffing staff, for increasing financing, Oreshkin is sure. “Any boss will tell you that he is acutely lacking in the personnel: the authorities set the problems, and there is nothing to solve them. It is clear that Mishustin articulates this struggle. It will require the creation of another state institution that controls this struggle, ”the political scientist noted,“ when Crimea was attached to Russia, there were 20 thousand officials, and now there are 35 thousand there. Over five years, the almost number of local bosses increased by 40%. Was it better to live? This is a question for citizens, but officials began to live better. ”