FEDERAL AGENCY ON PRESS AND MASS COMMUNICATIONS AND FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS AGENCY OF RUSSIA MIGHT BE ELIMINATED

The Government of the Russian Federation is currently considering the possibility of abolishing a number of departments. In particular, Federal Communications Agency and Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communications might be eliminated in the nearest future.

The plans of the authorities were announced by the head of the Duma committee on information policy, information technologies and communications, Alexander Khinshtein, in an interview with Izvestia newspaper. Federal agencies can be eliminated in 2021, despite the fact that the total number of officials will be reduced by 5-15%.

During the pandemic, the ineffectiveness of some departments became obvious - the Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced the reorganization of the state government’s structure on November 16.

It is worth noting that the discussions of such a measure have been going on since 2018, but the actions have been postponed all the time. Now Mishustin stated that the postponing of the reform is impossible, because the issue of adjusting the work of the public administration system is especially acute.

It is assumed that each authority will have a strictly defined area of responsibility. It was also noted that the reduction in the number of officials will also occur due to the number of vacancies - now there are about 20% of them. At the same time, funds that will not be spent on additional salaries can be used to increase the remuneration of the existing salaries of the departments’ employees. 

State optimization should take place from January to March 2021.

Experts note that, in fact, about half of the departments will be destroyed or merged with others. Optimization may affect the Ministry of Digital Science - and if the government has no complaints about the work of Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media, then the relevance of the existence of the Federal Communications Agency and Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communications will be discussed.