Abstract
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Currently Russia, as well as most of countries of Eastern and Central Europe, is in the process of transition from the authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regime of Soviet Union. Transitory process is a very complicated one, it takes considerable time and efforts from the government and civil society. One the most important sphere, that requires significant reforms is public administration, the way, governance is accomplished. The last decennary in Russia was marked by considerable reforms of public administration, including reform of public service, administrative reform, electronic government, reform of local administration. These reforms of very considerable scale required a lot of resources, but the final impact on the government efficiency is relatively moderate. Despite huge expenditure of national governments and international organizations, efficiency of public administration in several countries of Eastern and Central Europe, including Russia leaves to be desired. The fact that the return of investment in the public sector reforms in Russia is very low is a common knowledge. Nevertheless until now there is no comprehensive study of the reasons of such inefficiency. That is why one of the most actual questions to be solved by academicians together with public administrators is the identification of the failure factors of the public sector reforms.
In the proposed article the authors suggest one of the possible approaches to the problem, considering the eGovernment project as an example of public sector reform. Based on the sociological research, conducted by the School of Public Administration in the regions of Russia in 2004 the authors come to the conclusion, that the moderate success of the eGovernment and, more generally, public sector reforms, can be explained on different levels. First, the government itself is not interested in raising efficiency and cutting its costs. Second, changes in the shape of public institutes does not result in changes in the philosophy of public administration. In order to succeed, one should change the way, public administrators think. Efficiency of government in general will not improve until each bureaucrat understands, that citizen is the client, and his interests are in the centre of the government and his personal activity. Third, there is a cultural aspect of the problem. The process of reforms is a very complicated one, and foreign experience can be adopted in a given country up to the point. It is especially true when we consider such large countries as Russia or China, that have there own historical vision of public administration, its internal features and goals.
All these issues are studied in more details in the article on the empirical material of the eGovernment project in Russian Federation (eRussia).
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