"Quality, not quantity". Novaya advokatskaya gazeta, 18th October 2016
Reforming of the supervision activity of the state organs and reducing of pressure on business is widely discussed on different levels.
In this connection the Ministry of Economic Development worked out quite new and distinctive indexes for evaluation of the supervision activity of the organs of the legislation power. The main goal of the worked out normative legal act is to get rid of the hated "lash system "and transition from quantitative indexes to qualitative ones.
According to the authors of this project, changing of the evaluation criteria will help to solve the main problem - reduction in the number of checkups of the business subjects by the supervision organs and in the sums of fines. The new evaluation criteria will enable to shift inspectors from small business projects to large production objects, where incorrect work may result in an ecological disaster.
Practice of the MIA of Russia shows that changing of the evaluation criteria by using other statistical indexes won't eradicate the "lash system" - the so called statistical registration. But, without it, it is difficult to reveal those kinds of work of the governmental organs which need reinforcement.
Thus, for example, registration of committed crimes/offenses, scenes of crime should be used by the leadership for coordination of work of the personnel on crime prevention: if crimes are committed in public places, patrolling of these places should be reinforced. But law-enforcement organs connect crime prevention not with the quality of street patrolling, but with the quantity of records during his a shift time. Particularly because of that the main task of the Police Patrol and Checkpoint Service is to register public order offense cases, but not to prevent them.
There is also a unit of Economic Security and Prevention of Corruption (ESPC) in the system of the MIA of Russia which reveals corruption-affiliated crimes. Quite naturally, the main index showing effectiveness of its work is the quantity of the corruption-affiliated crimes revealed. As a result of the "lash system" we can observe absurd things: every local unit gets an approved annual plan to reveal corruption-affiliated crimes. In the end, the state gets quantity, not quality, because the lack of time needed to reveal and solve crimes makes it difficult to prove corresponding corpora delicties.
During my investigation activity the regional department of ES and PC was obliged to reveal 2-3 bribery cases in the first quarter of a year. Thus, in January-February a doctor was under investigation for getting a bribe from two female friends in return for sick-lists. It was the end of corruption prevention till the next January-February. Exactly because of that it is impossible to oppose the "lash" principle only by changing the evaluation criteria of activity of the supervision organs.
It is impossible to achieve positive results without a complicated approach to the relations between business and the state organs, the number of checkups won't go down, pressure on businesspeople will continue.
In our opinion, those people who possess experience of work with the state organs can be unbiased in evaluation of the effectiveness of their activity. The main evaluation criterion of the effectiveness of work of the state organs should become the opinion of business about their activity. The index of such an opinion is the number of complaints laid against actions (lack of actions) of the executives to the superior and supervising organs.
Such an evaluation method seems to be the most transparent one, because it will certainly help to achieve a better quality of carrying out duties by the officials representing organs of the executive power. It will also contribute to observing a law in the process of the supervision activity.
Aliona Grishkova, advocate