'One Click' Tracking For Kremlin Decrees
A Kremlin official said Friday that the government would implement by year-end a system for tracking statistics on the fulfillment of presidential orders.
What's more, President Dmitry Medvedev said he wants a version of the system installed on his personal computer so he can view presidential orders, delays and violations "with a single keystroke."
But analysts cautioned that Medvedev alone won't be able to control vast numbers of officials and that red tape would be eliminated only through an overarching administrative reform which they said Medvedev could not achieve because of a lack of political clout.
The planned system would allow Medvedev to read documents drafted on his orders, check their deadlines and learn the names of the officials who are in charge, Konstantin Chuichenko, head of the Kremlin's control department, told a Kremlin meeting.
Chuichenko demonstrated an initial version of the system for Medvedev, describing it as a customized software product with online access, according to a transcript of the meeting on the presidential web site.
Friday's meeting, a video conference with federal and regional officials based at the president's Gorki residence, was the third video conference this year dedicated to a discussion of how officials are carrying out the president's orders.
Medvedev did not scold officials for failing to fulfill his decrees, as he had done at the meetings in March and June.
Chuichenko said Friday that the number of fulfilled presidential orders grew 57 percent in the first nine months of the year compared with the same period last year.
Anna Lunyova, deputy head of the Center for Political Information, said the system would allow Medvedev to control only "key" orders, providing officials with an opportunity to "hamper or set in motion certain documents" as a "wonderful means of fighting with unwanted officials."
"Without an overall administrative reform, Medvedev's tut-tutting of officials will make no sense," Lunyova said.
But Medvedev is "afraid" to undertake radical reforms of the bureaucratic system because officials can refuse to fulfill his orders and because "he will lose the little clout and respect of society that he has now," she said.
Alexander Kynev, a political analyst with the Foundation for Information Policy Development, called Medvedev's hope to oversee all officials an "overload of functions."
Putin has the political muscle to make administrative reforms but doesn't want to do so because his clout rests on it, Lunyova said.
"The 2012 presidential election will answer the question of whether the bureaucratic system will survive," she said.
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