The openness leader among the federal executive bodies is the Ministry of Defense. The Federal Bailiff Service is an outsider agency.

MOSCOW, November 24, 2015. Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VCIOM) in cooperation with the Open Government presents the openness ranking of the federal executive bodies. The rating reflects the quality of the implementation of the Concept of Openness for the federal executive bodies approved by the Russian Government   decree dated January 30, 2014.[1]

The second openness ranking of the federal executive bodies was drawn up in 2015. In contrast to the 2014 pilot ranking, the research scale was enlarged: 41 federal executive agencies were evaluated. Besides that, the research method was also improved (introduction of weighted coefficients for certain positions depending on the important target groups), the evaluation of the executive bodies’ performance by the business representatives was singled out in a separate group.

The 2014 ranking provides the results of the independent external evaluation (made by ordinary citizens, experts and frontline workers) of the openness of ten most “social-oriented” bodies. The 2015 integrated openness ranking is based on the assessment of four reference groups (population, frontline workers, business representatives, experts), the level of awareness about the federal executive bodies’ activity (mass media coverage, accessibility, transparency and trust in information); interactions with the reference groups (interaction of federal executive bodies with the Public Council and the population); assessment of the performance of the federal executive bodies and the level of corruption on the public sector.

The Ministry of Defense is at the top of the ranking: the value of the integrated index* made up 57.5 p. It is followed by the Ministry of Emergency Situations (56.6 p.) and Ministry of Economic Development (50.0 p.).

The least “transparent” bodies are Rosimushchestvo (44.9 п.), Rosrybolovstvo (44.3 p.), Ministry of Construction and Housing and Communal Services (43.1 p.), Rosalkogolregulirovanie (42,9 p.), Ministry of North Caucasus Affairs (42.7 p.), Rosavtodor (42.6 p.), and Federal Bailiffs Service (41.7  p.).

*Integrated index of openness of the federal executive bodies is based on the subscripts’ adjustments calculated using the coefficient of variation of the mean for each index. The subscripts’ calculation are made using the data of opinion polls conducted among the population, frontline workers (regional and municipal workers, heads of non-governmental organizations), representatives of business community (heads of enterprises and organizations) and experts. Only informative answers were used to calculate the mean; the equal weighting principle was used.

The VCIOM research was conducted in 2015 and included several stages: (1) 30 all-Russian surveys involving 1200 persons in 42 regions, krais and republics of Russia; the statistical error does not exceed 3.9 %; (2) survey among executive bodies’ workers such as regional and municipal employees, heads of non-governmental organizations (6150 persons): (3) surveys among business community representatives such as heads of enterprises and organizations (6150 persons); (4) expert interviews (525 persons).

Note: Using materials from the site www.wciom.ru or wciom.com. as well as distributed by VCIOM. the reference to the source (or hyperlink for the electronic media) is obligatory!

[1] The paper is elaborated by the Expert Council of the Russian government to achieve transparency and accountability of the public bodies and the citizen satisfaction with the quality of services provided by the public sector; to give more opportunity to civic society to directly participate in the expertise in public sector decision-making; to achieve qualitative changes in the levels of the informational openness in public sector; to develop a public control mechanism. The Concept of Openness is accompanied with the evaluation guidelines helping to implement the openness principles as well as the method for monitoring and evaluating the level of openness.  Taken together, these papers constitute the Openness Standard.