On certain areas of improvement of legal support for government management of scientific and technological development

Kabytov Pavel Petrovich PhD in Law Senior Researcher; Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation 34 Bolshaya Cheremushkinskaya str., Moscow, 117218, Russia kapavel.v@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

The study of the existing variety of links between public administration and scientific and technological development as phenomena of social reality, the issues of the conditionality of their development and the influence of one on the other have been carried out by representatives of philosophical and economic sciences at least since the beginning of the XIX century. Legal science, in any case, domestic, began to explore the issues of legal support for public administration of scientific and technological development in the 60-80-ies of the XX century in the context of the formation of the state need to accelerate scientific and technological progress ^[1,2,3,4].

At the present stage of the development of the national legal order, the initial decrease in attention in science to the field of study under consideration, which naturally occurred against the background of the predominance of the idea of the need to reduce the role of the state in all spheres of society, including in scientific, industrial, and technological entrepreneurship, was replaced by an active search for an optimal legal mechanism to ensure effective public administration of scientific and technological development in new socio-economic conditions.- economic conditions. In a significant number of monographs, dissertations and other studies, a wide range of ideas on the transformation of the institutional, managerial, organizational and legal basis of the scientific and technological complex of the Russian Federation has been expressed, proposals on new forms and methods of state-legal influence on the spheres of science, technology and technological entrepreneurship, legal means of their implementation have been formed. Despite significant efforts by the State to build a new system of state planning, coordination and management of scientific and technological development, it often continues to be characterized as suboptimal and limited effectiveness.

The complexity of building an optimal system of public administration for scientific and technological development is predetermined by a number of objective and subjective factors, including the need for constant adaptation of this system to changing external and internal conditions. Among such conditions, scientists reasonably include: the dynamics and orientation of the processes of interstate integration (disintegration), the formation of a new technological structure, the constant increase in the intensity of standard-setting activities, the ongoing gradual transition from the Soviet paradigm of legal regulation of economic activity to the paradigm of optimizing legal regulation of economic activity ^{[5, pp. 309-312]}. An additional factor, but in many ways currently having a decisive impact on the sphere of scientific and technological development, has become the sanctions policy of foreign countries, including those directly aimed at limiting the scientific, technological and industrial potential of the Russian Federation.

The domestic law and order reacted quickly enough to the changed conditions. Thus, by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 145 dated 02/28/2024, the updated Strategy for Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation was approved. The positive novelties of the updated strategy include clarifying the goals and main objectives of scientific and technological development. If the specification of the goal of scientific and technological development was limited to an additional indication of the need to achieve national development goals and implement strategic national priorities as a result of the implementation of scientific and technological policy, then seemingly insignificant adjustments to the tasks of scientific and technological development will in fact mark a significant change in conceptual views on scientific and technological development as an object of public administration and legal regulation.

Tasks are fixed for the first time:

- building an effective system of interaction between science, technology and production;

- ensuring a unified scientific and technological space focused on solving government tasks and meeting the needs of the economy and society through the formation of an effective management system in the field of science, technology and production, as well as investments in this area.

It is important to note that the previously existing Strategy of Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation, approved by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated December 01, 2016 No. 642, setting partly similar tasks, operated with the triad "science, technology and innovation", which was replaced by the triad "science, technology and production". With the update of the strategy in this part, it is possible to state the final rejection of considering industry as a separate and largely unrelated to the scientific sphere area of state and legal influence. In fact, we are talking about a strategic approach to overcoming the problem of "a gap in the unified innovation chain between fundamental research and bringing their results to the real economy, which has been called in the academic environment the "valley of death" ^{[6, p. 4]}, formed after the rejection of the Soviet scientific and technological development management system and has not been resolved to the present the moment.

The updated strategy, along with the formulation of the task of forming an effective management system in the field of science, technology and production, as well as investing in this area, also defines certain vectors of its development. The implementation of the provisions of the strategy, which determine the need to change approaches to the formation and implementation of the scientific and technological agenda, financing of scientific research and development, scientific (scientific and technical) expertise, evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of scientific and scientific and technological activities, involves the transformation of the institutional and legal framework of scientific and technological development.

The institutional framework of scientific and technological development is a set of public authorities and organizations that implement public functions and management powers in the field of scientific and technological development, and entities directly engaged in scientific, scientific, technical and innovative / industrial activities, as well as the introduction of high-tech technologies.

The current framework of the system of the above-mentioned bodies and organizations (including their basic functions, the order of interaction), which has been consolidated in a separate section of the strategy, forms an integrated management system for scientific and technological development of the Russian Federation, and includes:

- The President of the Russian Federation;

- Council under the President of the Russian Federation for Science and Education;

- The Government of the Russian Federation;

- The Commission for Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation;

- federal state authorities, state authorities of the subjects of the Russian Federation, local governments, the Russian Academy of Sciences, funds for support of scientific, scientific, technical and innovative activities, institutes of innovative development.

The formation of an integrated management system for scientific and technological development of the Russian Federation is the result of its consistent improvement, which was carried out by clarifying the target block of competence of public authorities (addition and change of goals and objectives), modernization of the competence of such bodies (addition and change of functions and powers), formation of legal bases for coordination and their interdepartmental interaction, adaptation of organizational structures (introduction of positions of deputy head of the federal executive authority, deputy senior official of the subject of the Russian Federation responsible for scientific and technological development).

Despite these positive changes, the formulation of tasks in the strategy such as "strengthening horizontal ties and interdepartmental interaction in terms of ensuring scientific and technological development of economic and social sectors", "formation of an effective system of interaction between science, technology and production, increasing the susceptibility of the economy and society", means the preservation of certain previously formed negative trends in the field of scientific and technological development management and the need to overcome them.

The sphere of scientific and technological development covers scientific, educational, innovative, industrial spheres, the development of state policy and regulatory regulation, which fall within the competence of a number of federal executive authorities: the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Industry of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation and many others.

Each of them uses its own set of incentive funds (contests, grants, subsidies), organizes its own supporting infrastructure. In a number of cases, receiving support depends on the ability of recipients of such support to build cooperation between science and business and vice versa. This is a positive aspect, but it seems premature to talk about building an integrated end-to-end support system for scientific and technological development. A certain "departmental disunity" remains, in any case, joint acts of federal executive authorities and joint competitions are of a single nature.

One of the methods of ensuring a comprehensive management impact that is actively implemented in domestic public management practice has become the actual transfer of part of the management functions for the development of any promising scientific field and technology transfer in it: organizations of state ownership, organizations with state participation (autonomous non-profit organizations, state-owned companies, large businesses with state participation). Numerous roadmaps, agreements, and programs are the instrument of such transfer. Examples are numerous: projects of the national technology initiative, agreements between the Government of the Russian Federation and business on the development of high-tech areas (in particular, in the field of artificial intelligence, such an agreement was concluded with Sberbank PJSC, in the field of new materials technologies with the state corporation Rosatom, in the field of advanced space systems with the state corporation Roscosmos), identification of responsible organizations for the implementation of the scientific and technical program. Meanwhile, the analysis of such roadmaps, agreements, and programs reveals the predominance in most of them of either a scientific or industrial, innovative orientation, both in terms of the subject composition of participants and the content of events, depending on which of the federal executive authorities is responsible for coordinating the relevant mechanisms, but there are also positive examples, for example, The Federal Scientific and Technical Program for the development of genetic technologies for 2019 - 2030, approved by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated 04/22/2019 No. 479.

Federal scientific and technical programs, in general, should be characterized as the most optimal tool for ensuring the organization of scientific and technological development in certain scientific areas, since it provides:

- the use of a project approach that has proven itself in the framework of national project management;

- an open circle of participants in such projects, which provides managerial flexibility and increases the likelihood of their successful implementation;

- full involvement of executive authorities in the organization of scientific and technological development as direct participants in projects;

- a balanced approach to determining the range of participants representing the scientific, innovative and industrial spheres.

The planned development and institutionalization of independent scientific leadership as an element of the management system for such projects will contribute to further improvement of the legal regime for the management of federal scientific and technical programs.

One of the consequences of the active search for optimal methods of organizing and managing scientific, scientific, technical and innovative/industrial activities, as well as the high intensity of standard-setting activities in these areas, has become an extremely diverse range of incentives (contests, grants, subsidies), methods of organizing and managing scientific and technological projects (roadmaps, agreements, programs, etc. others). The research also draws attention to a large number of legislative acts providing for the creation of various territories with a special regime for carrying out scientific activities, which leads to fragmentation of the legal space and a decrease in the effectiveness of the functioning of territories with a special regime for carrying out scientific activities ^{[5, p. 313]}. In the context of consolidating as one of the principles of state policy in the field of scientific and technological development the principle of "concentration of intellectual, financial, organizational and infrastructural resources to support scientific, scientific and technical programs and projects of the full innovation cycle", it is justified to raise the issue of auditing these mechanisms in order to optimize and unify them.

Researchers positively assess initiatives to increase the concentration of resources in the most priority areas ^[7]. However, the planned changes in the principles of financing, the introduction of measures to increase the efficiency of spending on research and development, are highly likely to lead to a decrease in funding for "non-priority" areas, which in practice means underfunding of individual scientific and educational institutions. Thus, the regulatory legal acts have already laid down a mechanism for reducing the financing of certain scientific topics, by recognizing the inexpediency of financing them in accordance with the established procedure (paragraph 10 of the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated 12/30/2018 No. 1781). In addition, public authorities are planning to implement a project to introduce zero budgeting elements into the budget process (the main directions of budget, tax and customs tariff policy for 2025 and for the planning period 2026 and 2027). Therefore, it is possible to predict the next "wave" of optimization of the structure of scientific and educational organizations. In any case, the previous experience of university associations demonstrates that this is "a large-scale and very complex project that requires serious preliminary planning, ongoing monitoring, and most importantly, the involvement of all key stakeholders in its implementation" ^{[8, p. 118]}. At the same time, the legislation has not formed a holistic regulation of optimizing the structure of scientific and educational organizations. The issues of optimization planning, the target vision of the updated structure, principles, grounds and procedures for its implementation, criteria for choosing the form of optimization, and managing the process of its implementation are resolved in fragments (Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 312 of 08.04.2009; Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 84 of 06.02.2014). The management of the structure of scientific and educational organizations continues to be carried out in a departmental mode, and not as a single scientific complex.

As can be seen, the improvement of the institutional basis of scientific and technological development is inherently linked to the development of its legal basis. Along with the above-mentioned individual proposals for changing legal regulation, the strategy actualizes the task of ensuring consistency of the legal regulation system in the scientific, technological and industrial spheres as a whole. In the scientific concept of the development of legislation on science, two scenarios are predicted, according to which regulation can potentially develop:

- traditional, which involves further targeted improvement of legislation;

- possible and more promising in terms of achieving national goals in the field of scientific and technological development, which involves the formation of a new model of legal regulation of science. ^{[5, pp. 315-316]}.

Due to the expansion of the sphere of scientific and technological development, the normative recognition of the inclusion of the industrial sphere in it, the task of building such a new model includes the integration of legislation on science, education, industrial policy, as well as a significant number of legislative and by-laws regulating scientific, scientific, technical and innovative/production activities, as well as the introduction of knowledge-intensive technology.

Improving the efficiency of the system of interaction between science, technology and production, ensuring increased susceptibility of the economy and society to new technologies, creating conditions for the development of high-tech entrepreneurship is impossible without solving systemic problems of legal regulation in the field under consideration, repeatedly identified in scientific research. Such problems include the prevalence of control and accounting methods ^[9], the presence of numerous legal and institutional barriers to technology transfer from science to the real sector (the "toxicity" of public financing ^[10], the orientation of intellectual property legislation to the protection rather than the introduction of intellectual property). Therefore, a holistic modernization of the regulatory environment in the analyzed area is required, including aimed at improving the legal regime of intellectual property and its management, budget legislation, reducing the risks of business interaction with government organizations, creating a favorable legal climate for activities in the field of scientific and technological development, minimizing administrative and bureaucratic burden, primarily on state scientific and educational organizations.