No 1 (47) (2020)

Moscow has seen notable changes in terms of managing the city economy in recent years. Time has had its impact on the rule-making too. Three years down the line from the first interview for the MMGU Herald the Head of Moscow Government Legal Department gives an account of the changes in the Department’s activities. Digital technologies mainstreaming is reflected in the Department’s work: a new digital system is being introduced to help automate the process of normative legal acts’ coordinated approvals. It will allow to considerably shorten time frames for drafting, verification and approval of legal documents. It will further allow to dramatically cut down the number of legal and technical errors and inaccuracies that the Department specialists have to deal with while working with the incoming documentation. The joint work of the Department and Moscow’s local government agencies is greatly affected by the level of legal competence of those drafting legal acts. It is therefore momentous to note the role of educational programs jointly developed by the Department and Moscow Metropolitan Governance Yury Luzhkov University aimed at upskilling the civil servants whose job it is to draft legal acts.

The article regards the imperatives of mandatory legal techniques skill acquisition by professional lawyers. The skills are essential in drafting and revisions of legal acts, in particular while working with various structural elements of the latter, as they allow to ascertain defects or their absence in the legal regulation. A thorough analysis is made of the situation with the legislation currently in effect in terms of its consistency with the legal technique requirements: some of the legal acts do contain a high margin of legal technique errors. Proper knowledge of legal technique by people involved in law-making process allows to dramatically improve the regulatory enforcement practices as it helps avoid collisions due to lapses in formal logic or non-observance of requirements for the structural order of regulatory material. Specific examples are adduced to this effect to demonstrate potential adverse consequences that may follow if fundamental prerequisites for drafting and wording of regulatory instruments are ignored. Recommendations are given that would help avoid the defects while drafting legal acts.

Expenditure control is a top priority for the state bodies to combat corruption. If a civil servant or his/her spouse makes a purchase, which sum is over and above the threshold established by law, this fact will initiate an anti-corruption monitoring procedure of both expenditures and revenues of that particular civil servant. An important stage of the monitoring procedure is data acquisition of the civil servant’s financial standing. The official in charge of the monitoring procedure turns to state bodies and other agencies for relevant information. He is entitled to getting that information by Federal Law and regulatory legal enactments of constituent entities of the Russian Federation. However this legislation is not specific on what the requests for information should specifically contain, and what specific disclosures are to be gained. The criteria for unveiling corruption element in the monitoring data is not specified. The present article seeks to bridge this gap. It contains recommendations based on the author’s own first-hand experience, which will help execute expenses monitoring, assemble a full-fledged dossier and write a consistent monitoring report.

Healthcare reform in Russia has been going on for over a decade. Matters of healthcare system effectiveness, the use of managerial technologies, shaping the environment for conducting the reform and personnel development are still an open issue. In shaping managerial strategies the leaders of healthcare system, Chief physicians of Moscow medical institutions are taking account of not only Russia’s own, but also foreign best practices. Moscow Metropolitan Governance Yury Luzhkov University has set up a system of foreign study trips for heads of medical institutions, and is swimmingly realizing exchanges of managerial practices among Moscow doctors and their colleagues in various countries. Study trips help develop skills of constructive course of action under situations of uncertainty, uphold motivation for acquiring new knowledge, develop ability to evaluate results through diverse perceptional channels. It is this approach that allows to move ahead and use newly acquired knowledge for the benefit of national medical organizations.

“Municipal election process” – a textbook, which release is scheduled by UNITI-DANA Publishing for 2020, is the first ever textbook in the Russian Federation dedicated in its entirety to issues of municipal elections. The book will facilitate a more thorough study of local governments’ formation procedure and condition, and will be of use to practitioners given the application-specific material contained therein on a number of key issues of holding elections at municipal level.

The Third Contest of research and project projects by Moscow and Moscow Region students named “Metropolis of the 21st century – a city to live in” was held in 2019. The Organizer and Host – Moscow Metropolitan Governance Yury Luzhkov University was short-listing projects that were most fully in line with the idea of developing modern comfortable urban environment. The Jury noted high quality and relevance of projects, decent standard of schoolchildren’s qualification, as well as their interest in the problems of a modern metropolis.