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RUSSIA |
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RUSSIA |
RELATION WITH THE PROFESSION
1. Central Administration
The overwhelming majority of representative offices in the Urals region have few employees, usually five to ten individuals, making it difficult for young experts to secure employment there. The so-called power ministries are larger and generally require employees to have specific educational backgrounds. Nevertheless, the directors of some of these organisations employ the academy’s graduates when openings arise. In 1998, for example, a graduate of the Urals Academy of Public Administration was offered a position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Sverdlovsk area and another graduate is working in the regional representation of the Ministry of Trade and Foreign Economic Relations. It is difficult to provide additional data as the central ministries and departments generally do not share such information.
2. Sub-national Administration
The heads of regional and local administration are more willing to employ graduates of the academy. This is related to the fact that presently approximately thirty percent of public administration employees in the Urals region do not have any degree of higher education. This is especially true in small and average sized cities and villages. Only one percent of employees have state and municipal management degrees. The majority of older employees are not well prepared to work in the new economic and political conditions, lacking appropriate theoretical and practical skills. However, many directors prefer not to employ young experts and instead encourage or require current employees to pursue public administration studies in part-time programmes. Those who already hold a degree are eligible to receive a second diploma in state and municipal management after two to three years. Occasionally, local administration heads opt to send groups of employees for training. At present, for example, forty-five administrators from Izhevsk are being trained at the Izhevsk branch of the academy, including two of the mayor’s assistants and directors of large departments.
Graduates working in regional and local bodies of authority, even considering the short period of their employment, have reached rather high-level positions. E. Nazarov, for example, graduated from the part-time programme in 1996 and currently works as the Deputy Assistant of the Director of the Regional Department of Social Protection. A 1995 graduate, J. Abdurahimov, is the mayor of Verhy Ufaley (Chelyabinsk oblast) and has already defended his doctoral dissertation on the municipal economy. Many other graduates of the academy are employed as assistants of mayors or directors of departments in the administration of middle and small cities.
3. Access to the Central and Local Administration
In view of the above, it is necessary to note that far from all graduates of the academy are offered employment in bodies of authority and management. It also significant that the academies of state service are open, as opposed to the former party schools, which were only accessible to those individuals recommended by directors of appropriate party bodies. While party schools guaranteed graduates work in public administration, the academies of state service cannot provide such guarantees. The academies do try to assist graduates in obtaining work in their area of specialisation, and for the final three years of the programme, internships are required. The longest of these placements is during the fifth course and lasts for three months. These internships in federal, regional and local administration allow the students to become acquainted with these bodies. Quite often, graduates obtain employment in organisations where they interned. Nevertheless, in the last two years, only thirty percent of the approximately two hundred graduates of the full-time programme of the academy were employed in these bodies, and others are employed in commercial or bank structures.
The percent of graduates employed in public administration is higher for those who enrolled in the part-time programme, as the majority were already working in public administration or had a preliminary offer of employment provided they successfully completed the programme. Of the five hundred graduates of the part-time programme, seventy percent are working in bodies of authority and management.
As the academy is relatively new, its graduates have only been in the work force for four to five years. Therefore, it is still early to formulate any conclusions about how participating in the programme has affected the careers of its graduates. In addition, there have been substantial changes both in the personnel structure and in the curriculum over the past seven years. Therefore, additional time is required to negotiate long-term contacts between the new management of the academy and leaders of federal, regional and local administration. The academy has become a well-known institution in region, as the largest centre in the Urals for training personnel in the field of state and municipal management, and it actively assists regional and local bodies of authority in implementing political and economic reforms.
In Russia, employment and promotion practices in public administration change very slowly, although legislation at the federal and regional levels provides for open competition for available positions. To date, many high level officials, especially in local administrative bodies, continue to recruit staff according the older traditions, either by personally knowing a candidate or from the principle of loyalty to peers. These same motivations guide the system of promotion, thus reducing staff motivation to seek additional training to increase their qualifications.
Educational institutions engaged in providing pre- and in-service training for state and municipal employees frequently offer their services to redesign the system of hiring and promotion practices in the public administration. Scientists from the Urals Academy of State and Municipal Management from the Department of Social and Private Law have developed plans for regional parliaments. Many of these proposals have already been accepted, but to date actual changes in practice have not been significant. Even when commissions are appointed to examine a particular issue, it appears that commission members depend on the director of the appropriate body of management and much depends on the work of such commissions, and their character. The academy‘s management has offered to form commissions of independent experts, including representatives of academic institutions, but these offers have not been accepted.
Last year, the federal and regional governments sharply reduced funding for scientific research in general, and public administration in particular. Most research in this sphere will be financed by foreign grants (approximately sixty to seventy percent). Annual government funding for public administration related research is approximately $40-50,000 US from the federal level and approximately $10-15,000 US from the regional and local levels. Many research projects, especially those concerned with pre-election campaigns or the development of administrative regulations, will be carried out through private initiatives or by other leaders of local and regional bodies of authority, and the volume is difficult to estimate.
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