OREANDA-NEWS. April 19, 2012. “We are creating a functioning mechanism for harnessing the initiatives of Russian society. The State Duma should debate citizen proposals that get 100,000 authorised signatures on the internet.”

Transcript of the meeting: Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues and friends. I remind you that on March 22 we had a general discussion of the priorities that I set forth in the articles I wrote during the election campaign. As you know, when the election campaign ends, the real work begins.

The topic of our meeting today, of our discussion, is the quality of the state. Primarily we will discuss the creation of a competitive system of governance that is geared toward people's concerns. Modern media makes this possible, and it would be wrong of us to fail to take advantage of this opportunity.

Without a doubt, there are some areas where we should work to improve the quality of governance – this is obvious. We should improve both the culture of production, the administrative culture, and civil culture as a whole. Of course, civil society must become a real co-author of all transformations sought by the authorities. We have begun to introduce in practice such forms of work, and some draft laws (I have spoken about this, including in public) have undergone public expert review, which was thorough and useful. For example, the law on medical practice, on medicine in Russia. As you know, it led to many arguments but ultimately it became a compromise document that takes into account the interests of the professional groups involved and all citizens.

We need a modern model of governance based on state-of-the-art information technologies including crowdsourcing – a preliminary poll with a consecutive reaction to the results of the decisions that are being introduced.

As I said, we have made a number of important steps, including a portal launched on March 1 to get public opinion on the most important governmental draft laws. Citizens have the option to make their points and submit proposals. Essentially, that is the feedback mechanism that I mentioned: a project is evaluated not only by departments and not only by the people who had developed the draft law or by-law, but by the people who will live and work under these laws.

Today we also invited to our meeting some people who are not at all involved in the activity of the bureaucracy. They are Alexei Arbuzov, a member of the Public Chamber of the Republic of Khakassia, Georgy Belozyorov, and Feniya Khakimova, general director of Avtovokzaly company from the Samara Region. They have actively participated in discussions of a number of documents. I want to thank you, first, for what you've done and, second, for participating in our joint work today.

In general, I think that not only the government but all ministries and departments must create conditions for public review not only on the basis of documents and existing instruments but by extending these instruments and possibilities. I ask the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Justice to formulate the principles of this work and requirements for organising such work without delay.

The procedure for evaluating regulatory impact has yielded positive results. Here we are working rather closely with representatives of the business community, and some of our colleagues are present here. Moreover, you are in fact co-authors of these ideas, these proposals that are being implemented, and I hope very much that this practice will grow and will be used in all other areas of life and not only for building relations between businesses and the state.

We are creating a functioning mechanism for harnessing the initiatives of Russian society. The State Duma should discuss citizen proposals that get 100,000 authorised signatures on the internet, as I've said repeatedly, and a concept of this project should be prepared by the autumn. Meanwhile we must resolve serious technological issues too, such as setting up a website for registering and discussing initiatives, as well as the mechanism for authorising citizens supporting a proposal or submitting a proposal or an initiative.

And I'd like to touch upon one more issue in this meeting – strengthening the revenue base of our municipalities. Recently we have returned to this issue again and again. It is an extremely important level of government, and its efficient work largely determines the wellbeing of millions of our citizens, practically all our citizens. We must set the parameters and sources of additional revenue, municipal budget receipts, and we also need to develop clear and understandable criteria for extending inter-budgetary transfers from regions to municipalities, and these criteria should not depend on the whim of superiors.

This problem is raised and discussed at almost every meeting with city leaders. Let me reiterate: the issue is not simply about the use of budget funds. As you know, a solid revenue base for local budgets provides incentives for regional development and creates a strong foundation for greater independence, authority and the importance of municipal authorities.

Let’s begin with the first issue. I now give the floor to Mr Fomichyov (Oleg Fomichyov, Deputy Minister of Economic Development). Please go ahead.

Oleg Fomichyov: Thank you. Mr Putin, colleagues, you have handouts on the presentation called “Creating Participation Mechanisms.” I will go over it briefly. The handouts include highlights of this presentation and graphic materials explaining the points that I’m going to talk about.

As a follow-up to the article Democracy and Quality of Public Administration, the Ministry of Economic Development has outlined some approaches to establishing new participation mechanisms. You can see three key approaches on Slide 1. The first one is about promoting a decision. This is what you, Mr Putin, said when you spoke about the collection of 100,000 signatures and the need to consider corresponding initiatives. The second one has to do with broad-based discussions on the corresponding draft laws. And the third is about the regulatory impact assessment. I will briefly discuss openness and the public assessment of government work, as well as the support of individuals and corporations in their administrative disputes with the government.

I would like to begin with public initiative. Slide 3 shows an overview of foreign experience. We are not breaking any new ground here, since the European Union already has similar processes. The British project called “Electronic Petitions” works fine and allows any British citizen to file an electronic petition through a website. Once the number of petitions reaches 100,000, the given initiative must be considered by the parliament. It's a bit different in Great Britain, because their members of parliament are also members of the government, so in this sense such an initiative is considered by the government and the parliament at the same time. The European public initiative process involves more red tape, and the European Commission is not required to look into these kinds of initiatives. However, there is a voluntary flow of proposals coming from the EU citizens, and the EC may either accept them for consideration or not. We propose a Russian Public Initiative system. To a certain extent, it is different from the system we have now. We do have a number of mechanisms that can be used to discuss draft laws or other regulations and legal concepts. There are many of them and they can be sorted by industry and region and so on. We suggest building a specialised, I would even say a lean, strictly functional website that would do just two things: register initiatives and allow a vote on them. All other discussions can be conducted on the existing forums, but voting should take place on this website. The authentication system would be able to confirm that voters are Russian citizens. Such an authentication and identification system has been developed by the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, and we suggest using it on this website that will provide public services.

Slide 5 shows how this public initiative process stacks up against currently available tools. The key difference is that these initiatives will, as a matter of fact, be binding. The one that we have now presents voluntary initiatives, whereby any legislative agent can take any proposal and submit it to the State Duma without any guarantees that it will be granted serious consideration.

The proposed procedure is shown on Slide 6. It works as follows: an individual posts his or her initiative on the website, which… Let me point out specifically that this initiative doesn’t have to be submitted in the form of a draft federal law, because we can hardly expect the general public to present a legally accurate document. In addition, a legal text would invariably attract more criticism than simply suggesting an idea. Next, the suggestion will be checked for consistency with the Constitution to filter out obvious out-of-line proposals. After that, the proposal will be put to a vote, and if it gets 100,000 votes or more during a year, then a binding, for the government, mechanism will be activated – I will elaborate on that in a minute – with an eye toward submitting it for consideration by the Duma. If it fails to gather 100,000 votes, then the proposal will be removed from the website after a year.

What should the government do? We have already discussed several options out of session and decided that these proposals could be sent directly to the State Duma. However, since we are talking about mere ideas, there must be someone in the Duma… First, we cannot impose this work on anyone and, secondly, someone should take upon himself the task of drafting federal laws etc. Therefore, we propose that in cases where an idea garners 100,000 votes, the government should be required to work on it in an open manner… If the government doesn’t support it, then it should publicly explain the reasons. If a proposal gets the support of the government, then the initiative should be either sent to the legislative drafting commission or directly to the government.

Vladimir Putin: I have a question right away. Look, if there’s an initiative that is destined to become a law – and, as we know, laws regulate social relations – we can assume that a situation may arise where these initiatives will affect the interests of other groups of people. I think we should find a way and a method for the government to take into account the interests of divergent groups as well, rather than always pitting the government against the originators of the initiatives. Most certainly, there will be other opinions, and the government should take them all into account. All viewpoints should be considered in preparation of such initiatives before they are submitted for consideration by the Duma.

Oleg Fomichyov: This is exactly what we are proposing to do: have the government discuss an initiative first, study it thoroughly and include opinions from other concerned groups.

Vladimir Putin: How do you include other people’s opinions? They also need to have the capability to make their opinion known on the website.

Oleg Fomichyov: Yes, of course.

Vladimir Putin: An initiative must be supported by 100,000 votes, but another 5 million people may be against it. The government should hear all positions and then take the final decision together with the State Duma deputies.

Oleg Fomichyov: There are two alternative solutions here. The first one is when we say that any initiative supported by 100,000 votes deserves consideration by the government, even if it’s clear from day-one that the initiative is not quite legitimate. The government will need to release an official comment stating the reasons for refusal, and the issue will be closed. The other alternative provides for voting in favour of, or voting against, an initiative. Then, the initiative will be submitted for consideration by the government if 100,000 more people voted for the initiative. However, we believe that this is a less transparent approach because in that case any initiative can be pulled through using voting procedures …

Vladimir Putin: That’s a good way to water down an initiative.  That’s not good even if we don’t need it. However, we should allow people to vote for and against, because this is a way to include all opinions.

Oleg Fomichyov: In order words, people will be able to vote for and against, but only the votes for would be taken into consideration, is that right?

Vladimir Putin: If an initiative gets 100,000 votes then the government should consider it with due account taken of the opposite viewpoints.

Oleg Fomichyov: Good, that’s right. If, based on a report by the federal agency, the government or the legislative commission decide to go ahead with the development of a draft law, then the government should draft a high-quality draft law and submit it to the parliament in accordance with the established procedure. To avoid a situation where the originator of a proposal is unable to recognise his own idea in the final draft, the entire legislative process should be made public, and all correspondence between the authorities should be made available so as to provide as much transparency as possible. As a matter of fact, I just gave you a brief description of the work involved in considering these initiatives.

Igor Shchegolev: Aren’t we making things overly complicated? If an idea isn’t supported by the parliament, and it took several months or even a year to prepare the draft, we will thus create a huge time lag and people will be dissatisfied. For example, let’s assume that an idea gets the support of 100,000 people, but then our bureaucracy comes into play. Ultimately, the parliament will dismiss the idea. Perhaps, we should first ask our deputies to provide their assessment of the idea and let us know upfront if it’s worth bothering with the draft law?

Vladimir Putin: This can be done in parallel, but still such initiatives should be considered by government experts. There may be initiatives that involve major federal spending, so we would need to make all the appropriate calculations.

Igor Shchegolev: Of course.

Vladimir Putin: There are many good ideas, but few of them can be easily implemented. Actual implementation is the result of the painstaking work of experts. When we work directly with the parliament on government initiatives, we always have a zero reading. We can discuss these initiatives at the same time with the deputies. However, government experts should be involved from the start.

Igor Shchegolev: I fully agree with this, and I believe that this is the way to go. I just don’t want us to be fixated on bringing a ready draft to the parliament. There may be ideas that will require the drafting of a major federal law but that is comprised by many elements… Normally, such laws take a lot of time to prepare.

Vladimir Putin: It might work like that: first, an initiative is supported by 100,000 people and then by MPs; after that, it is taken to the government level, and experts decide that it will require so much money that we won’t be able to afford it in 50 years.