http://www.ewi.info/system/files/reports/Modernizing%20Municipal%20Finance%20of%20the%20Kaliningrad%

In particular, a law amending Russian legislative acts (amended 1,453 federal laws and cancelled 41 federal laws) and a package of 27 laws, referred to as «The Affordable Housing Market Package», were adopted.

By 2004, a transition to a three-level administrative system in the federal government (ministries, agencies, services) had been completed.

However, as First Deputy Minister of Economics Mikhail Dmitriyev said, excessive functions had not been eliminated by the beginning of 2005. The system of interaction between authorities, their internal activities, and the decision-making mechanism did not change. Administrative reform did not touch the regional level, where more than 90% of bureaucracy is concentrated, including territorial divisions of federal authorities. The anti-corruption aspect was neglected. No standards had been worked out for the quality and accessibility of state services as well as administrative regulations for the performance of state functions and provision of state services.

In the fall of 2004, specialists from the Commission on Administrative Reform, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and Higher School of Economics, and experts from the Center of Strategic Studies started working on a federal targeted program titled «Administrative Reform». Its purpose was to enlarge the agenda of administrative reform and extend it not only to the federal but also to the regional level. The program called for devising an effective mechanism for achieving the set goals. The program was based on international experience of similar reforms in Great Britain, the United States, Brazil, and other countries in 1996-2004, as well as historical traditions of managing major projects in Russia (for example, the Soviet space program).

By the fall of 2005, the «Administrative Reform» draft program had transformed (mainly because of the Finance Ministry’s criticism) into a concept for administrative reform in Russia in 2006–2008.

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