OREANDA-NEWS. November 14, 2008. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) was ranked first, together with Rostrud (the Federal Labour and Employment Service) and Rosnedvizhimost (the Federal Real Estate Cadastre Agency), on the results of the first stage of administrative reform in the rating of 17 federal executive bodies, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

The rating was assigned by the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, which reported to the Governmental Administrative Reform Commission on 28th October 2008.

FAS Russia has determined the following priority directions of administrative reform for 2008: advancing the quality of performing state functions, perfecting administrative-and-managerial structure of the Antimonopoly Service to improve efficiency, increasing transparency of the work of the Antimonopoly Service, and withstanding corruption.

To achieve the above goals, FAS Russia undertakes the following actions:

- Creating the network of public consulting councils at all regional offices of FAS Russia, that are aimed to increase transparency of antimonopoly bodies, improve efficiency of antimonopoly enforcement and support small business

- Improving the management system in terms of developing control mechanisms and stimulating the work of structural units and regional offices of FAS Russia. For instance, FAS Russia has devised the scheme to evaluate efficiency of its regional offices and the Central Office based on various criteria (for example, the ratio of executed determinations to the issued determinations).

- Exercising bilateral monitoring of the quality of the FAS Russia's performance. On the one hand - public control by citizens and non-governmental organizations, on the other hand - monitoring by the antimonopoly bodies to identify and process the complaints on the failure to observe administrative regulations by the FAS Russia's officers.

In 2008 FAS Russia continued introducing anticorruption schemes under the programme approved in 2007. Currently FAS Russia has:

introduced revised hiring procedures;

developed the mechanism to prevent conflict of interests;

introduced collegial principle for determining the amount of "turnover" fines (the Commission is chaired by the Head of FAS Russia);

analyzed normative acts of FAS Russia to eliminate potential corruption;

and

senior executive officers of FAS Russia personally control executive discipline of the regional offices;

FAS Russia exercises the schemes to ensure transparency and accessibility of information on the FAS Russia's activities.

Currently, in accordance with the National Anticorruption Plan, approved by Dmitry Medevedev, the President of the Russian Federation, FAS Russia is developing the anticorruption programme for 2009 - 2010.