Staffing of Vologda oblast local self-government

Effective management of territorial development, authorities’ execution of their functions and tasks are largely dependent on the provision of bodies of state power and local self-government with skilled workers. However, due to various reasons highly qualified specialists and young people do not find it attractive to work at local government, especially in rural settlements. Thus, the staffing problem is particularly acute at the level of municipalities. On the basis of statistical materials and results of the survey of heads of municipalities the article considers the issues and problems of human resources of Vologda Oblast local self-government. It shows that in this region there is one of the largest number of employees at local self-governments and electoral commissions of municipalities per 10,000 people of population (54.6 persons) in Russia and the NWFD (2nd place), although in 2013 - 2015 the measures to optimize the structure and regular number of authorities were conducted. The questionnaire survey of heads of the Vologda Oblast municipal formations (municipal districts, urban and rural settlements) reveals that 26-50% of all the respondents assess the provision of local self-governments with the personnel in their municipality as very low and low. As for social portrait of the respondents, it most of them are of pre-retirement and retirement age, have higher technical and engineering, educational, agricultural, legal or economic education, their work experience at local government is less than 10 years. The article shows that only 16.8 percent of municipal employees received additional professional education (professional training, retraining or advanced training) in 2014. It analyzes the implementation of the project “Governor’s Team: municipal level” in the Vologda Oblast and the ambiguous assessment of its effectiveness identified in the survey of heads.