President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Medvedev, we have been working together for a long time on the main areas of Russia’s development, the economy, and the social sphere. We have worked together on the relevant national projects.
You know that there are questions from the governors, with whom you should be jointly working. We met with Government members and heads of regions not so long ago in Crimea to discuss the matter of controlling this work. These topics were also raised at yesterday’s news conference on the results of the year.
I asked the Government to take a closer look at the proposals from the regions, including on the organisation of this work and the monitoring of the execution of the instructions given. I know that you are ready and would like to talk about this in more detail.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev: Mr President,
Indeed, the Government, in accordance with your instructions, has launched this work in close contact with the regions. At the moment, I would like to report to you that the data sheets of national projects in all fields have been prepared and approved. That is, these are 12 national projects and, accordingly, 12 data sheets.
These data sheets have been agreed upon with the regions and they have been adjusted, also following the instructions you gave in Yalta at a meeting of the State Council Presidium where we discussed national projects in an expanded format.
We have now secured funds for these data sheets and a total of 5.7 trillion rubles has been earmarked in the federal budget for the next three years, which you also talked about during the news conference. This is a lot of money, distributed over the years, and even slightly more than we originally planned.
I hope that such a system will work effectively enough. However, it must be monitored. We presume that such strategic monitoring (besides the Council, which you head) will be carried out by the Government, with the results summed up twice a year.
If we talk about operational monitoring, this will be done online on a daily basis. All the ministers and supervising vice-premiers must have it on their computers, and they should be able follow how each indicator changes. And to intervene if they need to – in this case, we cannot do without hands-on management – and make adjustments.
Public and expert associations should provide assistance in this kind of monitoring, as you also said, as well as the Popular Front, and the United Russia party, which is willing to do it. This way, we will be able to follow what is really happening.
Thus, in general, I am reporting to you that we are ready to roll out this work in full.
Vladimir Putin: That is good news. I hope the Government will take into account the comments of the regional leaders, so that the number of these indicators, and the quality of the work will be such that it actually can be controlled by them.
But there is another problem that I would like to draw your attention to and I would like to ask you to devote some time to working closely on this. It is all very well to monitor a bunch of indicators on a computer, but it is important to see what happens in real life in the regions, what is behind these indicators.
I very much hope that my colleagues in the Government – ministers and deputy prime ministers – will pay very close attention to this component. I am also asking you personally to join in this work.
Dmitry Medvedev: Certainly.
When I mentioned computers, I meant that everything must be there in real time and there must be real construction, that is, the user would see that a facility is being built, for example, and that one or another job is being performed.
However, all members of the Government will travel to the regions and inspect how the implementation of national projects progresses. And I will certainly do this too.
Vladimir Putin: Good.
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