Monitoring the Quality of Financial Management of Governmental Bodies: Analytical and Management Aspects of Application

One of the main results of reforming the budget process of the Russian Federation in the middle of the 2000s was the widespread implementation of the approach to the work of the executive power, in which budget funds are allocated in accordance with the expected results. Performance indexes are necessarily developed for government programs, national projects, and other strategic planning documents. Finally, monitoring by indexes is increasingly being used as a tool for evaluating the performance of executive authorities and officials. Is this approach expedient in any case? Is it always possible to use monitoring by indexes as a basis of the performance evaluating system for civil servants? This study considers the feasibility of including the results of assessing the quality of financial management of budget managers in the system of indexes for assessing the activities of executive bodies of state power of the Russian Federation constituent entity. The study is focused on distinctive features of monitoring the financial management quality of budget funds’ managers, which make it difficult to use for a sound judgment about the efficiency of the participants of the budget process. In the course of the study, an analysis was carried out by the method of comparison and correlation of Pearson using data from the following sources: the official website of the Committee of Finance of St. Petersburg, the state information system for information and analytical support of the activities of the executive bodies of state power in St. Petersburg and the automated system of the budget process of St. Petersburg. As a conclusion, arguments are provided not to use the results of monitoring the financial management quality, conducted by the financial authorities of the Russian Federation regions, due to its inherent specificity and its special role in the system of minimizing budgetary risks. The observations and conclusions made can be useful for further studies of key performance indexes’ systems for government bodies.