THEPECULIARITIES OF INTERACTION BETWEENFEDERALANDREGIONALLEVELAUTHORITIESINADMINISTRATINGELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT INRUSSIA

Styrin Evgeny Ph.D.

Assistant chair

School of Public Administration

LomonosovMoscowStateUniversity

MoscowRussia

Abstract. Russia’s response to building global information society was reflected in State Federal Program “Electronic Russia” which can be considered as a main tool for Russian Federal Government in solving complex problems of country’s informatization. To manage effectively e-government processes in Russia means to build integrated information resources available not only on federal but also on regional and municipal levels of governance. The basic idea of this article is to underline the key role of Russian regions in forming the common model of electronic interaction among different level authorities. During the sociological research based on interview with public servants responsible for regional informatization in eight regions in which the author also took part it became possible to form a classification containing the three models of regional e-government in Russia. These are:

  • Partial or weak informatization;
  • Chaotic, nonsystematic or extensive informatization;
  • Manageable, systematic or transforming informatization.

Each of the above mentioned models comprises such crucial for regional e-government development factors as: leadership, management authorities’ structure, interaction with civil society and business community, social capital, the quality of e-government strategy, economical indicators of a region.

For federal center in Russia it will be necessary to pay attention to the way in which the collaboration with regional authorities in forming the national e-government architecture, scaling the typical IT-projects (such as electronic document management systems, geographical information systems, digital signature infrastructure, e-services portals, e.t.c.) can be built due to the high degree of asymmetry in regional economic and social development.

The success in e-government development in Russia lies in the area of enabling more freedom to regional authorities’ e-initiatives and projects.

In each of eight regions analyzed the crucial factor of e-government success or failure could be outlined. It turns out that social capital may be as important as the role of regional leader and the size of the e-government budget doesn’t bring the region to the immediate success due to the managerial problems in administrating public IT-projects.

Key words. E-government, Federal Program “Electronic Russia”, regional e-government strategy, ICT infrastructure, social capital, leadership in E-government.

Introduction

The term “E-government” as a process of technology enactment in public administration became quite popular with public servants on federal, regional and municipal levels in Russia. But the definition of this term in Russiahas obtained some specific features.

Let us start the specification of e-government in Russian Federation with the worldwide accepted division of e-government structure on the following segments: “Government to Government” (G2G), “Government to Business” (G2B), “Government to Citizens” (G2C) [1,2]. In Russia the biggest attention (which can be measured in financial expenses) is paid to G2G sector. It means that public servants first of all think of possible benefits from e-government as means of improving their own comfort and quality of working place. That is why the most expensive e-government typical projects performed within Federal Program “Electronic Russia” are: Decision Support System for governance, Geographical Information System, “One stop shop” e-services portal, Electronic Document Management System [10].[1]

The main idea of “Electronic Russia” in G2G sector is to learn the best practice from these typical or experimental projects to comply with the principle proposed for e-government management by Gartner Group: “Think big, start small, scale fast” [3].

In G2B sector of e-government the typical projects are: e-procurement systems for government, B2B systems playing a role of electronic field of communication between commercial companies which can be sellers or buyers of certain products or services.

And finally in G2C sector the main project is the e-services portal which supports the electronic channel of communications between citizens and public service institutions.

In spite of the fact that main directions and targets aimed in “Electronic Russia” such as building national ICTinfrastructure, performing e-transformation in governance and public service, improving multi-level communication among the authorities e.t.c can be also found in other national strategies belonging to countries-leaders in e-government for example USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Singapore there exists the problem outlined by R.Heeks as a gap between declaration and practical steps in technology enactment [4,5,11].[2]

When we want to present an adequate view of e-government development in Russia we need to examine the processes of interaction between different level authorities. We want to outline the key role of regional level governance. Our main hypothesis is that success of e-government in Russian Federation depends primarily on success of e-government projects in regional level of governance.

Before explaining the importance of regional level e-government it is necessary to mention the neutral property of information technology. The IT neutrality means that IT is considered to be a tool to implement the key targets, demands put by society, political authoritiesor global challenges.

For example IT in Finland may play the role of citizen’s involvement into the process of decision making in public governance. This process is often called “e-democracy” [6]. In the same time IT can be the instrument of information filtration as a part of public policy in Iran or China [7]. Such process may be called “e-authoritarism”.So we can understand that ICT reflect social and political values and also the style of governance.

In the same time we should admit that technology may become the “vehicle” of future reforms in the style and means of governance. The example of such a country is Singapore where Government operates in an information environment determined by specific properties of ICT [5,8].

1. Regional e-government in Russia

With regard to e-government situation in Russia we may admit the scenario when ICT usage reflects the number of problems in Russian public administration which don’t depend on ICT. Among these challenges to Russian public administration are:

  • The change of the team guiding the e-government strategy implementation on federal level takes place very often (not less than once a year). In this situation the style and targets of administrating e-government change faster than the process of adaptation of key players implementing the e-government strategy;
  • The e-government strategy consists of too many aims but doesn’t set their priority. That is why the process of moving the state online is chaotic but not advancing;
  • The political, economic and social potential of Russian regions is spread very heterogeneously. It means that starting position for e-government projects differs too much from one region to another. In this situation the task to provide an even development of e-government in each region becomes a challenge for Russian Government;
  • There doesn’t exist a single center of responsibility for the success of e-government projects on federal level. There are five public institutions which give financing to e-government projects on federal level in Russia.[3] Their activities are not coordinated as well as the areas of their responsibility. In this case we may see that one and the same project is performed and financed from different sources from two to several times. For example seven types of “Geographical Information System (GIS) for public administration” existin Russia. The question is which of these GIS should be chosen as a “typical project” for further replication;
  • Only half of all the Russian regions are involved in Federal Program “Electronic Russia”. A number of regions don’t have their strategy for ICT development;
  • The e-government initiatives are not of a high priority among the federal level leaders. ICT development and e-government hadn’t become one of the National projects which exist now in Russia;[4]
  • The federal center is not playing a role of IT champion in Russia. There are not many successful e-government projects on federal level. The federal Ministries don’t propose the standards, recommendations and requirements to the information systems in public administration. We would like to underline the challenge concerning the legal framework and expertise for e-government projects. The mechanisms of using electronic means of interaction should be regulated by special packets of laws on federal and regional levels;
  • The ICT infrastructure in Russia is also far from completed stage. Only 15% of population used Internet more than once [12]. The most active in Web usage population is situated in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and in a number of big regional cities;
  • The financial mechanisms of budgeting e-government projects don’t work when the project lasts for more than two or three years because of complex forms of accounting;
  • Finally the most important challenge of e-government success in Russia is building the partnerships among public institutions, commercial companies, non-commercial institutions and civil society in e-government projects. Before starting an expensive e-government project the demand of end users should be analyzed.

The factors mentionedabove indicate the particular way of e-government development in Russia.The key problems are concentrated in building the infrastructure of administrating e-government projects. The financial mechanisms, best practice replications, coordination of targets and tasks are not performed satisfactorily.

The situation described above is not likely to be changed in a short term period. That is why the regional level of governance became the “vehicle” of e-government in Russia. Authorities on a municipal level can’t play this role because they lack funding, professionals and specialists in ICT, ICT infrastructure.

As we mentioned an uneven development of social, political, economic potential of the regions it is necessary to consider this fact in modeling the interaction between regions and federal center in e-government projects.

In the picture №1 below you can see the key factors which in our opinion let us build the three models of regions from the e-government development point of view.

The key factors of regional e-government development
Economic development of the region
The role of leadership in e-government
The infrastructure of administrating e-government projects
Participation in Federal Program “Electronic Russia”
Social capital
ICT infrastructure
The regional e-government strategy

Picture №1. Three regional models of e-government development in Russia.

2. Key factors of regional e-government development

As it can be seen from the picture №1 we will describe the regional e-government models through seven key factors which can show us the qualitative difference in the values they can take. So first of all we will describe the key factors themselves and then we will define each model.

Before describing the key factors one more comment about models titles should be made. We use the term “informatization” because we think it reflects the current situation in Russian e-government more precisely. In spite of the fact that we understand the term “e-government” in its wide meaning (thus it includes the process of informatization) we want to underline that there is a lack of transformation in style or interface in communication with governmentalinstitutions from a stakeholder’s (citizen, businessman, tourist e.t.c) point of view situated outside the public institution. It means that the present stage of e-government in Russia can be characterized as a turn from “web presence” to “web interaction” stage and there are almost no examples when reengineering of processes in public institutions preceded to information system installation. That is why we call the current usage of ICT in Russian public administration “informatization” still considering this term as a part of “e-government” term definition.We have outlined seven factors describing e-government in each Russian region using the sociological research interviews with regional public servants responsible for informatization, web-resources, official documents on regional e-government.[5]

2.1 Economic development of the region. In spite of the examples when the success in e-government projects was achieved not by investing the big amount of financial resources but by extraordinary administrative steps such as partnership establishment, team work e.t.c.(The Chuvashia Republic) we should admit the correlation between e-government budget and the success of e-government projects in Russian Federation. All the regions in Russia can be divided into two groups: donors ( they bring additional financial resources to federal budget) and acceptors ( they use additional financial resources for social programs from federal center). There are only twelve regions-donors in Russia. Almost all of them are situated in the first twenty places in regional e-government raiting [9]. The example of donor regions are Moscow, Saint-Petersburg.

2.2 The role of leadership in e-government. The governor of the region is a key player in obtaining the initiative in e-government projects. If the ICT usage is the one of the priorities of the governor and his team then many activities of regional authorities are directed to build ICT communication channels for all the segments of e-government. Governor tries to find extra financingin addition to the regional budget, to fix the time marks, to monitor the progress of e-government projects, to involve public authorities in strategy implementation. The example of the region is Republic of Chuvashia [13].

2.3 The infrastructure of administrating e-government projects. This factor correlates with the role of leader in the region. As soon as e-government starts playing an important role in the region a special structure in regional government responsible for monitoring, coordinating e-government projects appears. In case this structure has some means to influence on those regional ministries or agencies which ignore e-government initiatives the overall result is much better than average. The example of the region is Republic of Tatarstan [14].

2.4 Participation in Federal Program “Electronic Russia”. This factor is a very good indicator of the fact that regional leaders know about e-government initiatives and support them. Even if the experimental e-government project ends with a failure the region will gainexperience and a history of ICT usage. Citizens and public servants also become aware about new electronic means of governance performance. We can measure the activity of a regional leader in e-government by the quantity of funding from the Federal Program “Electronic Russia”. Still we should mention the examples when the success of the e-government in the region didn’t depend sufficiently on “Electronic Russia”.[6]

2.5 Social capital. As we can see from different researches in Russia and in the world generally there is a direct dependency between social capital and the success of e-government projects [9,15]. To become successful e-government project should be developed in a specific social environment characterized by such properties as people’s age groups, education, professional activities, political participation and inclusion, readiness for changes.In these terms the role of scientific community and educational infrastructure become the key factors of regional informatization. Regional Government should involve academic potential and universities for research implementation because e-government projects are of innovative nature. That is why we observe correlation between the role and number of scientific representatives and their participation in the government projects and the speed of electronic development. Education in society also becomes a key factor in e-government because the opportunities and abilities to use Internet based information systems for performing different types of transactions are better known and understood by more educated citizens.

2.6 ICT infrastructure. One of the basic demands on e-government is to build a physical level of electronic communication: Intranet for public institutions, unlimited and not expensive access to Internet for citizens. That is why an important role in e-government success belongs to such programs as: “Internet in schools”, “e-lifestyle for citizens”, “Public access points” e.t.c. We should mention that electronic channels of communication are not a replacement for other means of communication. They just expand the number of opportunities which can be used by citizens to communicate with authorities. To make e-government happen public policy must combine the ICT infrastructure creation with a special educational and promotional program to make citizens aware about IT communication channels.

In a broader sense we can understand ICT infrastructure not only by its physical implementation but also by a number of IT specialists, commercial companies, research and academic centers presented in the region. The professional community determines the priorities and possible ways of e-government projects development. For government outsourcing becomes a suitable way of establishing partnership in e-government projects collaboration.

2.7 The regional e-government strategy. First of all it is necessary to mention that it is not always possible to use the term “strategy” in relation with the ICT and Internet usage in public administration on regional level. In most regions the processes related to e-government can be described by the term “informatization”. Public servants only start gaining the experience in working with Intranet, Internet, e-mail e.t.c. The Russian regions ICT infrastructure in average has not reached the critical line when there is a high growth and demand on electronic services and communication with government.[7]

That is why the majority of regional governments preferred to name their response to ICT challenges “informatization programs”. These official documents set an action plan on what is going to be done in the field of ICT usage in the region. For example, ICT infrastructure building, document management system for regional government implementation, electronic trade system for business agents. It is important to mention that these steps are more tactic than strategic and are made to reflect the current processes in regional government sector. So in other words these processes are more to automatization than to reengineering.

In its turn the minority of Russian regions preferred to use the term “e-government strategy” meaning structural and process reengineering before the ICT implication.[8]

General analysis of regional e-government or informatization programs shows that in spite of the wide range of activities declared in the programs not many projects are implemented and their results are not always satisfactory.[9]

The best practice (among all e-government projects) can be observed in G2G e-government sector. This fact can be explained by a high priority assigned to G2G sector not only by Federal Program “Electronic Russia” but also by regional governments.[10]