Analysis of stages of assessing performance of executive authorities of the Russian Federation

Assessing the performance of regional executive authorities is an issue that is currently gaining importance in Russia. The country’s leadership regards this tool as an effective measure for implementing economic policies stimulating regional development. This is confirmed by the close attention paid by the President and the Government to the institution of performance assessment. The methodologies for implementing the assessment system have changed repeatedly since 2007. Even today, with a new approach to performance assessment adopted, the final version is far from complete. The goal of the study is to discuss the experience of performance assessment of regional authorities: analyze the regulatory framework and the critical appraisals it received from the scientific community, review the alternative concepts and proposals. Analysis has revealed three stages in the development of the system for assessing the performance of executive authorities of the Russian Federation; we have considered the specifics of each stage and identified a number of patterns occurring during its formation, including: consecutive reduction of indicators of performance assessment observed at the second and third stages, increase in the importance of population surveys (quality component) in generating the final results, especially noticeable in a new assessment methodology from 2017. At the same time, the study has shown that the institution for introducing a mechanism for performance assessment of executive authorities is still far from perfect, despite the rich experience accumulated. As a result, we have concluded that it is necessary and expedient to improve the assessment methodologies. We have made some proposals for developing threshold values for indicators, introducing a procedure for assessing the performance of industry-specific sectoral committees and departments by improving the criteria for assessing the performance of regional authorities and making a transition to total assessment of performance of regional executive authorities in Russian Federation based on the «quality» criterion.