MOSCOW, March 15 (Itar-Tass) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting to form an open government on Wednesday that Russia has the problem of personnel shortage. In particular, he noted that young specialists have some difficulties to take governing posts. Therefore, the president instructed the experts to develop the principles of new social lifts, which would make it possible to form a modern personnel reserve in the country.
The working group for drafting the proposals to form an open government system was held at the Moscow School of Management at the Skolkovo innovation centre. The meeting focused on the development of the personnel potential and state administration system, the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily reports. On Wednesday the same problem was discussed at expert hearings at the same School of Management and decided to share their conclusions with the president. “On the one side, all seems to be good, the education is good, but on the other side, the personnel is lacked everywhere. This is the case with the public service, where unfortunately young promising people do not go to work quite often,” the president said opening the debates.
About 1,65 million people work on the public civil service in Russia today. Medvedev believes that the efficiency of the whole country depends from them. Sometimes it turns out to be that even the president faces the problem that he does not see any worthy candidates for some posts. “When you begin to think, who can be appointed to a concrete post, it turns out that there are quite few proper people,” he acknowledged. There are young, promising people, but without the proper experience, there are experienced people, but it is high time for them to deal with other matters, but not to work on the public service.
The work with the personnel potential should start with the selection. The selection is based now on the principles of belonging to some clans and corruption, the director of the young professionals trend of the Agency of Strategic Initiatives, Dmitry Peskov is cited by the newspaper as saying. An open national online exam should be introduced. The exam should not spread immediately on all public servants. Only those who come to work on the public service, candidates for promotion and those wishing to draw attention of their chiefs should pass this exam. The experts failed to set the level of posts, at which exams should be taken and people should be enrolled on the competitive basis.
Dmitry Medvedev supported almost all initiatives, the Kommersant daily writes. Most plans of the incumbent president were finally revealed for his future work at the post of prime minister. He agreed to establish a separate agency for a reform on the public service and to introduce a competitive selection for public servants. In 2012 the president intended to replace all chiefs of governmental services and agencies on the competitive basis.
The experts offered to introduce contests as those in developed countries as the key instrument of selection at the governing posts of the public service. Dmitry Peskov actually asked the president whether the authorities are ready to introduce contests not only for public servants, but also for the top public posts. At first Dmitry Medvedev explained that the ministers, vice-premiers and the prime minister are “our product of political appointees.” He did not support the initiative to appoint them on the competitive basis. However, at the end of the meeting he agreed to ponder over this. He also agreed to think over a concrete proposal to appoint a new agriculture minister, minister of regional development and the sport minister on the competitive basis this year.
Dmitry Medvedev immediately voiced the intentions to realize the initiative of the working group for reappointment of all chiefs of governmental agencies and services (except for power-wielding agencies) on the competitive basis already this year. Still, he offered to do it gradually, dividing 50 chiefs in groups by five officials each.