Transcript:

Dmitry Medvedev: I would like to welcome you all within these new and well-forgotten old walls, which, nonetheless, have been renovated over the past few years. Well, we have rather good conditions for fruitful work. Although we still don't have a government, it is currently being formed under the prime minister's deadline for submitting a government organisational structure to the president that will soon expire under the law. This is precisely what I'm doing. Moreover, the deadline to finalise proposals regarding prospective government members will also expire soon. After this, I will go on a business trip, and the president will review specific candidacies. But our Open Government will continue to go forward. I'm very happy about this because we will be able to discuss the final report of our working group to establish an Open Government system at our current meeting. This means that the efforts of the working group have produced specific results. This document contains specific proposals for the high-priority aspects of the government's work. As we agreed, the report itself was posted on the Bolshoye pravitelstvo.rf website. To the best of my knowledge, this happened on May 6, right? At any rate, people have been interested in this website over the past few days despite the holidays. Of course, this also makes me happy. The media has started discussing the report's provisions. Of course, this does not mean that it has reached all the media, as we had expected, but it is currently being discussed. This issue is of paramount importance.

On the whole, I have acquainted myself with the report's provisions on the website. I believe that the report is well-prepared, and I would like to thank the working group and all of our colleagues involved in this process. Since the group's inception in February 2012, the participants have prepared many constructive proposals. In some cases, these proposals are breakthroughs, and some could even be described as drastic. These proposals are called on to improve the system of state administration, to fight corruption and to promote competition and entrepreneurial activity. As the president of the Russian Federation, I issued instructions on more than 20 such proposals. But a final report is not something that can accomplish the work of formulating new ideas and initiatives. This document and the proposals it entails are open to discussion. I expect our colleagues and the expert community to put forward proposals on how to cooperate with the government on the priorities outlined in this report.

Today I would like to discuss the next steps we need to take on the approved proposals and how to implement them. I hope this report won’t degenerate into yet another set of expert ideas that end up disappearing into the government’s archives, or the Presidential Executive Office, or the State Duma. They should form a foundation for future government work and legislative activity. We must take practical steps to form an expert council under this government. This is the approach you’ve come up with, and I support it wholeheartedly. We only need to understand what format this expert council will operate with, and, naturally, to decide on its membership. I hope that all those present will be involved in this.

We should also consider the operational format for the working group as we go forward. Possibly this group should be reorganised differently, but still one that would nevertheless possess the necessary administrative authority and assist in implementing the expert ideas and proposals that have been and will be created by Open Government. And of course, we will follow through on those items that we have discussed to this point.

Again, much of what we have discussed over the last three months has been included in the president’s instructions that have been handed down while we were busy organising this Open Government system. I have signed all those instructions and now they are being implemented. It’s good that some of the ideas we have discussed have formed the basis of the first decrees signed by President Vladimir Putin. The implementation of these directives is under way, and the government will take part in this effort. Let me remind you that the timeframes indicated in the president’s decrees are quite specific. A considerable part of this work in every area of the Open Government’s activities should be implemented this year, at least in terms of launching these new projects. Yesterday I also signed my first instruction as prime minister. It is about drafting proposals, by August 1, on enhancing the role of public councils under federal executive authorities and their territorial divisions. The councils should be given an opportunity to estimate the effectiveness of these federal agencies’ performance and their views should be taken into account as we assess the efficiency of their heads.

Proposals on the key efficiency indicators for federal executive authorities should be submitted by the same date, along with a mechanism for assessing their achievements, and status reports on this performance that will help to gauge the quality of work done by the executive authorities and individual officials. This is a grand agenda that will require coordination between the federal executive authorities and officials, the government as a whole, the presidential organisational structures, if necessary, and the expert community.

These three months have shown that we are capable of working quickly and efficiently and that even the boldest ideas can be translated at least into directives. I hope that these directives, their implementation will help us create a fundamentally new environment for public dialogue and for the advancement of economic relations, an environment where anti-corruption standards will be applied they way they should.

Colleagues, you’ve just heard my introductory remarks. Again, I would like to thank everyone for taking part in the work to draft proposals for Open Government. Who’s ready to take the floor? Mr Dvorkovich, please.

Arkady Dvorkovich (Aide to the President, deputy chairman of the working group): Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr Medvedev. The working group has indeed submitted a report in line with the presidential decree.

The report contains proposals in all 10 areas that have been placed at the top of the list of priorities, and public discussion has been launched. Until other decisions are adopted, the working group will continue its activities. In particular, it will analyse the proposals on this report that come in through the site http://bigovernment.ru, and thereby formulate proposals on implementing specific tasks. In his May 7 decree, the president instructed us to draft a document, before December 1 of this year, on the main areas of the government’s activity until 2018. As we see it, we must contribute to the drafting of this document as a working group or as an expert council of a relevant commission upon its transformation. We believe this document must contain all useful expert proposals.

In addition, participants in the extended session of the working group that you conducted in the middle of April formulated proposals for the public government’s methods of work, including those on establishing an expert council and a coordinating agency. We’d like to ask you for specific instructions on implementing these proposals upon the completion of this meeting. We suggest setting up a government commission as an agency to coordinate the work of experts and bodies of power. We believe that the working group that is currently acting in line with the presidential decree must develop into this coordinating body. It will include both executives and employees of the government and presidential administration and the heads of the expert council. Needless to say, this body can only be formed after all cabinet members have been appointed. These are our organising proposals for the near future.

Dmitry Medvedev: They're simple, but in principle, I think they are appropriate, because we can only achieve something on the basis of our proposals if the Open Government is backed by some administrative resource. This is still essential in this country, at least for the time being. Without this, far from all ideas will be translated into reality, although I hope that some of our plans will develop on their own as well.

Mr Abyzov, please.

Mikhail Abyzov (Presidential Adviser and Deputy Chairman of the working group): Mr Medvedev, esteemed colleagues. I would like to thank you on behalf of everyone for your assessment of the working group’s activities. Indeed, the final report is now being actively discussed, and we would like to note once again that this document is not set in stone. We are continuing to monitor the situation, and we are cooperating with the expert community as regards amendments to its main provisions. This is precisely how we plan to organise work in the future.

I would like to say a few words, including about the instructions that you issued yesterday. They have to do with ways of improving the work of federal agencies’ public councils, introducing a system of key indicators for assessing the effectiveness of work and improving the assessment of the state administrative system’s performance. In this regard, we believe it is highly important to merge this work with such extremely important and high-priority aspects as drafting a three-year budget, which is now being considered by the government. Moreover, it should be combined with specific efforts to chart high-priority areas of the government’s work over a three-year period. This work is set to end in December. Actually, all of us, including the working group and the expert community, realise that it is impossible to formulate specific indicators for assessing the effectiveness of work and the activity of the state administrative system, unless this is combined with such elements of state administration as the budget, budgetary spending and their effectiveness. Otherwise the relevant powers and responsibility will not be combined and balanced as needed.

In this connection, Mr Dvorkovich has noted that the formation of a government commission on the basis of the working group is one of the elements of these mechanisms. We have also drafted and submitted proposals regarding the relevant format for establishing the government’s Expert Council as a key element of an expert platform, which might also exert its influence and play a coordinating role in such processes. The complete implementation of such measures is impossible, unless we pay due consideration for the human resources policy. Consequently, we are reverting now, during the formation of the new government, to proposals put forth by the working group at our first meeting – the need to establish a human resources agency and to improve the state executive branch in the system of the Russian Federation’s government. We believe that after it is elevated to a new level, work in the area of human resources will facilitate the more effective implementation of measures that were prepared in line with this format or a modified format. This is a very important approach that will make it easier to accomplish the objectives you have set for the government and for the Open Government. In fact, this was outlined today in the working group’s proposals. Thank you.

Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you Mr Abyzov. Good. I would like to make just one comment. New proposals have been submitted and are being discussed. At the same time, not everyone here considers these proposals to be all-embracing or comprehensive. Some people are disappointed in the dialogue with the government because they are unable to see any change. We have discussed this with some of the participants of the working group, and we have noted that the level of distrust is very high. People believe that we will talk for a while, then we will form the government and then we will act as usual. In other words, public life is one thing and life inside the Government House or behind the Kremlin walls is quite another thing. So everything just keeps developing according to its own rules. I think we shouldn’t feel offended here and pout, saying that they don’t understand us or don’t believe us for some reason. The best way of proving that the idea of the Open Government is not just some clever PR trick or an attempt to make certain people more popular would be to implement it. Yes, maybe it is impossible to do this in a month or two. Maybe we won’t do this even in a year, but if we are pedantic about it and methodically inform them that we have adopted such and such laws, established such and such bodies and achieved such results, they will change their attitude. Experts may also believe more in the idea, and ordinary people will see the Open Government as a working system that is establishing the necessary level of communication between them and the government.

And there is one more remark that I’d like to make. I haven’t spoken about this because I think it goes without saying, but apparently I have to mention it. Of course, the Open Government is not just some attractive shell of the government in the White House. It expresses the idea of an open government in general. I hope very much that all government agencies will apply the principle of open government in their work – even those whom we didn’t involve in this work for obvious reasons…   

We cannot, for example, summon judges and tell them what to do because they represent the judicial branch – an individual system of power, and, moreover, the law prohibits the exerting of influence on courts, but I think the Open Government principles must cover all branches of power. Incidentally, in this sense these principles are being accepted as part of a related international initiative which we are planning to join in the near future.

This is what I wanted to say. Mr Ivanov, as the man in charge of this work…

Sergei Ivanov (head of the Presidential Executive Office and chairman of the working group): Thank you, Mr Medvedev. I’d like to say a few words if I may. I headed the working group for three months on your instructions….

Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you for this.

Sergei Ivanov: I won’t give any assessments. We did what we could and stated it all in the report openly and objectively. I met with Mr Abyzov every week and we discussed the priorities you identified four months ago.

I think we should by all means preserve these priorities, these ten working sub-groups that we have established. And now, switching to the future and maybe, building a bridge… You have asked us what we must do not to lose the momentum that we had for the past three months. I think that the expert community in the broad interpretation of this work and the people that have gathered here… Sub-groups must continue working today and tomorrow even despite the formal absence of the government. You said that specific ministers have not been appointed…

Dmitry Medvedev: They are performing duties, of course.

Sergei Ivanov: They are performing their duties, of course, but nobody prohibits experts from working tomorrow and beyond, and they should continue doing so. As the head of the working group, I’d like to express my opinion about the future. It seems to me that it is necessary to establish some bureaucratic agency within the government simultaneously with a group of experts that do not hold official positions. Only a combination of experts and officials, in the good sense of the word, will prevent the momentum you mentioned from declining.  

Dmitry Medvedev: Good officials in the good sense of the word… Are there such to be found?

Sergei Ivanov: I mean officials in the good sense of the word, because essentially the word “official” is perceived as a derogatory term. The bureaucrat, the official – we hear that, it’s no use denying the facts. So, it seems to me, this combination will prevent sound ideas and initiatives from dying out and will make it possible to give them the necessary legislative form or the form of a governmental resolution – a legal document.   

In this sense, in my view, we should think about perhaps a small bureaucratic agency made up of officials within the government that will interact with an open platform beyond the Government House, will simultaneously embrace ideas and promote them and transform them into adequate documents.   

As for the expert council, in my view, this is quite a sound idea. We just need to draw a dividing line. The expert council, naturally, cannot work on an everyday basis in this sense, while the expert council’s working body can and must work in the same way as we did in the presidential administration. These are my observations and proposals.  

Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you very much.

I would support Mr Ivanov’s proposal. First, I said this, in fact, in the very beginning: without a special platform we will hardly be able to properly organise the operation of either the expert council or the commission. That means that we will think about what this should be. We are pressed for time. I think Mr Ivanov’s proposal can be included in the president’s decree on the composition of the government of the Russian Federation that is currently being prepared, as well as in some governmental acts on this issue that will also be adopted.

Now concerning the expert council. Naturally, the expert council will not meet in its full composition every day, but initially when this idea came to my mind, I thought that the meetings between the prime minister and the expert council should in no way be perfunctory, because we had done this formerly too. When I worked in the government, and later as the president, we regularly met with experts. What’s essential is the value of these meetings. As a rule experts have something interesting to say. The president or the prime minister makes some notes, then a considerable part of the notes is either not used at all or is shelved. I believe that my meetings in the framework of the expert council should be held very regularly, several times a month, generally, depending on the need, of course.     

This is my first point. Second, these events should focus on completely practical issues. We have just set up the agenda, there are presidential acts, both mine and Mr Putin’s on this issue. So now, should the expert council convene, it should simply discuss the progress towards a concrete objective. This is first.

Naturally, the government will issue a great amount of documents and prepare proposals for introducing draft laws into the State Duma. I think such proposals should also be discussed on this expert platform. This complies with our concepts and in some cases a series of system-wide draft laws should not be submitted to the State Duma at all unless they have passed through the melting pot of the expert council. Only in this case will the expert council gain authority, which will be useful. Please, go ahead.

Alexei Volin (president of A3): Based on international experience and some consultations on the Open Government partnership with our colleagues in Brazil, I’d like to make some points. First, when we look at the international experience we see that the Open Government has two characteristic features: the range of services and the depth of penetration. The depth of penetration means that this organisation and services operate both at the federal level and largely at the municipal level. These services are also rather extensive and include not only e-voting or fighting corruption but also a high range of state and socially important services making people’s life more comfortable. Therefore people’s comfort is a serious aspect of Open Government in many countries. In this respect, our situation, in my view, can include two aspects that should be kept in mind. The first is to extensively involve the mass media in order to attract attention to the possibilities of the Open Government, and the second, parallel to the former, is to create Open Government infrastructure throughout this country, which perhaps requires the involvement of two large state companies and their infrastructures and capabilities – Rostelecom and Pochta Rossii, which would ensure that this reaches every residential community, no matter how remote.

The last thing I wanted to mention is that our meetings with colleagues have demonstrated that things are not that bad in Russia as far as transparency and services or practices, as we call them in the expert group, are concerned. At the Open Government summit in Brasilia, representatives of various CIS countries inquired whether we could help them to set up a number of transparency-related services. Specifically, there was a great deal of interest toward the officials’ income disclosure service and the Russia Without Fools project.  

Dmitry Medvedev: I am just curious which CIS countries made the inquiries?

Alexei Volin: Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev: Ukraine? That makes sense, I believe.

Alexei Volin: We have also received similar inquires from various public organisations, which indicates that CIS civil society representatives are interested in cooperating with us and using our experience. Thank you.

Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you, Mr Volin. First of all, it’s good to hear that we, too, can be a development beacon of sorts for some countries. Second, regarding your suggestion to use the capabilities of government agencies to promote this public dialogue throughout the country, I think it’s a good idea. We could certainly involve Rostelecom as well as the Pochta Rossii (Russian Post) in this. All right. Who else wants to speak? Go ahead, please.        

Yury Lyubimov (Deputy Minister of Justice): Mr Medvedev, colleagues. Since this issue has been raised here, let me briefly inform you that a working group has prepared a session within the framework of the second International Legal Forum in St Petersburg to discuss the international dimension of Open Government activities. We are planning to hold an early morning session prior to the Forum’s plenary meeting. A number of prominent international experts have confirmed their attendance and I wanted to share this information with you.        

Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you very much. Obviously, I would also like to invite everybody to the Legal Forum. I am also planning to attend. This is one of our largest forums, and hopefully, it will become a permanent event just like the St Petersburg International Economic Forum has taken its place among the most important economic events. The economy cannot function without a legal framework, and lawyers are often needed to assist in solving complicated issues. Go ahead, please.   

Yury Kotler (head of the independent non-profit organisation Talent Pool – the Country’s Team of Professionals): Mr Medvedev, I would also like to report on the implementation of the tasks, assigned within the framework of the professional working group. We first of all focused on preparing the competition regulations, which we had discussed. The regulations will be finalised within seven days, on time.    

I would like to explain the logic. We want to create a transparent and clear system that will help promote talented people and will be open for everyone to participate. The prime minister will have an opportunity to choose from three to five candidates, who will pass through clearly established selection stages. At the same time, the public will have an opportunity to monitor the selection process from the very beginning and to participate in it. In other words, it will be kind of a pyramid in reverse that will allow all interested parties, including self-nominated candidates, as well as those nominated by public councils and various agencies to…       

Dmitry Medvedev: A pyramid in reverse is called a funnel.

Yury Kotler: Yes, essentially it is a funnel… But it is a funnel with positive feedback… People will be able to understand the uniform selection mechanisms and to participate. In this regard, we are also working on your assignment to use an exam for… It should be single and clear… And the requirements for using the talent pools…   

Since in this case they will become efficient, and it will be a mechanism for nomination and self-nomination of candidates. It will also save time, since… This does not mean that people can participate only once a competition has been announced. They can nominate themselves in advance, go through various procedures, demonstrate their professionalism and only then participate in competitions. In essence, they will be choosing the best time for their involvement in the selection process. 

Before you joined the meeting, we were discussing which positions should require a competition and which should not. We are talking about non-political appointments, as political appointments are not covered by these regulations. 

Dmitry Medvedev: All political appointments have been already finalised and I am planning to present them to the president very soon.

Yury Kotler: And we would also like to… Currently, we are preparing a list of agencies that will be first to use this competition mechanism. If it proves effective we will extend it to other federal, regional, and municipal agencies. Thank you. 

Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you, Mr Kotler. Here is what I would like to say. To prove the effectiveness of our work and that we did not spend the last three months in vain, we should try to start holding competitions in the selected agencies by the end of May, immediately after the government cabinet, consisting of political appointees, has been formed. And perhaps already in June (I am not sure what timeframe is provided for by these competitions), we should make the first appointments to prove that the competition mechanism works, including for high-ranking government officials. I will look forward to your proposals then. Please, go ahead.

Nikolai Nikiforov (deputy prime minister and minister of information technology and communications of the Republic of Tatarstan): Mr Medvedev, ladies and gentlemen, obviously the Open Government is impossible without modern communications. But for the Internet and communications it would not have been possible. In this context, building a technological platform based on a one-stop principle of cooperation of ordinary people, private companies, experts and government agencies with the bodies of power is an urgent task. It is possible to resolve this idea if you support it, a government commission is established and experts start working.

Importantly, all work and the drafting of the report were conducted in the open both at federal and regional level. We saw for ourselves the implementation of theoretical proposals suggested by the experts. This is great. I think there is no room for criticism here, but it is important to streamline this work to save budget funds. Why do several times what can be done once? Second, to hold people’s attention, we should define the Open Government’s technological platform also in terms of activities (how it should function) and should it be just one? On the one hand, it would best not to monopolise it so as not to kill the initiative in the regions (an element of competition is always important), but, on the other hand, let me repeat that we shouldn’t destroy the one-stop principle and disorient people on the best way of openly cooperating with the government.

Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you, Mr Nikiforov. I also support what you’re saying. We must understand after all what the technological side of communication will be because what we have was used or could have been used to explain what the concept of the Open Government is, what to expect of it, and to send proposals to those people who were interested in establishing direct contact with the government and in formulating their ideas. However, generally the technological issue of the Open Government’s interface is quite sophisticated rather than routine. Obviously, we won’t go anywhere without the internet. We must think of how this whole system will work. Maybe, in this context it makes sense to analyse foreign experience (we are not the only ones who have to answer such questions). There are many good examples and everyone has heard about them – such as the experience of Singapore and other classic cases that are usually cited. Let’s pay attention to them as well.

Please, go ahead. Who would like to say something? Please, go ahead.

Sergei Guriyev (rector of the Russian Economic School, a private educational institution): Mr Medvedev, ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to support what you said about confidence and interaction with society because in the past two months I realised that many experts and our colleagues in the government and beyond do not really trust what we are doing. As you said with good reason, this problem can only be resolved by deeds.

As you remember, one person or more raised this issue at every session we conducted. As heads of sub-groups, we have always emphasised the need to focus on concrete and quite definite issues… Yet, there is a lot of discontent in society – it demands that words be matched by deeds… I was surprised by this level of mistrust and by how rapidly news of broken promises spread.

You have mentioned other branches of power, for instance, the judicial branch. It seems to me it is already completely open. We watch court sessions live. Unfortunately or fortunately, representatives of civil society no longer attend court hearings but spread this information via social networks, such as YouTube.

I went to Chistyye Prudy yesterday and saw many people who had worked with us in the Open Government. Unfortunately, for the time being they don’t believe the Open Government will do what it says. I think this is a huge problem for all of us and we shouldn’t forget about I – it is even worse than it seemed. I had thought it was a sensitive issue and now I’ve heard it is still a problem. It is a big problem. Information spreads very quickly and the news about Alexei Navalny who was sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest for failure to obey the authorities… And this is despite a video of his arrest on YouTube and the fact that we all know there was no failure to obey them at all… Moreover, Twitter shows photos of court sessions and gives an account of them. This transparency should compel us to act quickly and always keep our promises.

Thank you very much.

Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you, Mr Guriyev. In fact, you spoke about the same problems as I did. My view of the level of openness of the judicial system is not very rosy, although it did become open due to reforms conducted by supreme courts and technical advances. However, the issue of openness of the judicial system, just like any other system, is not only about things that you can see. You are talking about video footage and things that you have seen, but this is not all there is to it.

I have spent a fairly large amount of time in courts and I know the justice system inside out, including the evaluation of evidence and theory. The problem with our expert community and civil society as a whole is that we have learned to judge everything without being specialists in these matters. Fair elections have been a popular topic lately, haven’t they? Ninety-five percent of videos posted on the internet are considered a definitive proof of rigged elections. If someone suggests that legal experts should take a look at such videos, they say: “You are working for the authorities. You are questioning things that don’t require proof.” We should leave this kind of thinking at the door. We should use the Open Government to instil legal culture in everybody, including the advanced class of people who walk wherever they please. Occasionally, they act as angry citizens, but angry citizens should also think clearly, because clear thinking is something that everyone needs: the president, the government and disgruntled people.

In general, I can’t help supporting you, and I would like to reiterate that we must do our best to prevent the gap between words and deeds from getting wider. We should act without illusions, knowing that people who expect us to turn things around in one month will say, “Come on, you can’t trust them. They don’t want to do anything and nothing will ever change.” We need to give positive examples – both small and large – showing that we are taking steps forward.

Finally, with regard to satisfied and dissatisfied people, I believe that such an environment still makes it possible to communicate with a variety of people. Remember, when we had a meeting on combating corruption, there were different people, including ones that are part of the social circle that vehemently opposes the authorities and are almost urging people to go to the barricades. But we were still able to maintain a conversation with them and we hardly had any disagreements when we discussed professional topics. Therefore, leaving the issue of the basic political struggle for power aside (it will certainly go on in our country), this is quite normal: we are an open society no matter what they say and we have an evolving and a fairly complex democracy. Speaking about professional matters, we have more in common that we have differences with almost all the political forces that want what is best for our country, so keep this in mind. Please go ahead.

Vasily Sidorov (member of the VTB Bank advisory board of shareholders): Mr Medvedev, I would like the Open Government not to forget about such an applied area of work as work with state-owned companies and greater transparency of state-owned companies. This is an area where changes may occur much faster than in public administration, since all companies are supposed to follow clear market mechanisms. We would like this to remain a priority in accordance with your instruction to improve the quality of the state-owned companies’ management and also given the fact that the Open Government could directly contribute to the implementation of certain measures in this area. We can start doing it without having to wait for important appointments and so on. The work on corporate governance and specific proposals regarding specific companies can start from day one of the Open Government’s practical work.

Dmitry Medvedev: I absolutely agree. Results can be attained much faster here, because organisational decisions taken at the level of the government or individual ministries can be adopted easier than system-wide decisions that require time and concentration of efforts. Mr Kuzminov, please go ahead.

Yaroslav Kuzminov (rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics): Mr Medvedev, colleagues, I would like to pick up where Mr Guriyev left off with regard to issues of trust. I believe that trust can be established only if we get departments involved. We will invariably be limited by declarations of intent at the government level, because this is a general format. We need to address two issues at the level of departments: first, engage independent experts in public councils – I‘m not sure how they will be named…

Dmitry Medvedev: We decided that they will be public councils.

Yaroslav Kuzminov: Yes. And get non-profit organisations, consumer associations and other non-profit and non-government stakeholders involved, including ones that sharply oppose particular ministerial policies. People often smile when they talk about the Defence Ministry’s public council and Nikita Mikhalkov (film director) being a member. However, Minister Serdyukov did a very important thing that established a certain amount of trust: he invited the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers to join in, and the public council began operating despite media jokes about Mr Mikhalkov. 

Dmitry Medvedev: And his leaving the council…

Yaroslav Kuzminov: Yes, coming, leaving and so on. When we talk about plans for the near future, I believe that forming the expert council is important, but the goal of this council and the government should be to look for interested non-profit organisations and independent experts and include them in public councils of the departments. Thank you. 

Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you, Mr Kuzminov. I agree that we need to go deeper into these entities, or we will stay on their surface forever. The public councils that we mentioned are quite an appropriate form of work. I know that department heads will find it difficult to get their critics on board, but this is exactly what will show our readiness for changes.

Dialogue with uncompromising opponents should form the right environment. I suggest that we get all inconvenient critics onboard public councils at our ministries and departments. Although inconvenient, these people should be constructive. We don’t want the ones that say that they won’t even sit at a table with us. We want the ones who point out to us what we are doing wrong. I believe that this is the way to go, and we can find a common language with everyone.

I have worked for four years with the Human Rights Council. It has lots of fierce critics of the government who go to all kinds of rallies and demonstrations, but they have specific proposals. When we finished our joint work, they said that they managed to achieve certain things. This is because they talked and I listened. Things should be done the same way by the ministries. If they have something to say, the minister should listen rather than flicking them away like flies or telling them that the time is not ripe yet, we don’t have that money, that Russia is an unwieldy country unlike Europe and so on… I want public councils to have such active people onboard.

Please go ahead. No one wants to speak? All right, since we covered all the bases, I would like to repeat the words that have been said here many times about our effectiveness and credibility. We all agree that we shouldn’t lose heart if someone doesn’t hear us or doesn’t accept what we have to offer. We need to work with such people. This is my first point.

Second, we should be able to show that the authorities are ready to change. On the other hand, people who come to us should realise that they will be able to create a new decision-making forum only if they do their fair share of work. Let me reiterate that even minor results would mean that the process is working. Surely, they will continue nagging us about how there have been almost no changes and there’s a gap between the stance adopted by the government and real events.

I heard enough of that over the past few years. They tell us that we are speaking nice words, but things are quite different in real life. Things are much more complicated than that, and they tend to change based on what we are saying. No one should underestimate the transformative power of our words. Agreed? Then let’s form the government, keep working on the Open Government and look forward to the first contests. Thank you very much.