Quality criteria for strategies of Russian regions in 2023

The article analyzes the results of an expert survey on the quality criteria of the socio-economic development strategies of constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The survey was conducted as part of the preparation and realization of the expert discussion “Is ranking regional strategies possible?” organized at the Strategic Planning Leaders Forum 2023. The survey involved 25 professionals dealing with the strategic planning of regions and cities. According to the results of the survey, the top ten most important qualities of the regional strategy were as follows: quality of strategic analysis; adequacy or compliance with specifics of the region; realism in taking into account resource constraints and objective processes; compliance with national goals, Presidential Executive Orders, and federal documents; consistency/ methodology / harmony of logic; clarity of priorities; readiness for implementation (elaboration of implementation tools); correctness of the set of target indicators and their values; ambition, scale of goals and projects; taking into account risks and measures to increase shock resistance. Expert opinions on the possibility and expediency of rating strategies are systematized, divided into four groups: a) ranking and comparison is possible and useful if the goals and rules are clearly formulated; b) you can compare, you can’t rank; c) it can be ranked based on the results of implementation; d) comparison and ranking are impossible or useless. The difficulties of ranking texts and the preference for comparison and evaluation of strategies within the framework of annual competitions are revealed. A scheme for organizing an annual contest of regional strategies is proposed, including the following stages: selection of experts; a kick-off seminar of experts, following which a set of parameters and criteria for evaluation of each parameter are fixed; independent evaluation; a meeting of experts to identify and discuss the reasons for strong differences in evaluations; a public online seminar with presentation of the results.