President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday asked the government to draft a list of officials who have been punished for not carrying out his orders, although the White House is saying that everything is under control.
During his second meeting this year dedicated to how presidential orders are being completed, Medvedev demanded that government officials who are not following his orders on time be singled out and punished.
"This needs to be sorted out in the nearest future and a list presented showing who is guilty of violating the time frames to fulfill orders," Medvedev said, adding that the guilty faced serious punishments "right up to termination."
The list should also indicate who was ultimately punished and in what way, he said.
This is not the first time that Medvedev has criticized the government for dragging its feet while preparing documents. Most recently, on April 5 he scolded the Transportation and Economic Development ministries simultaneously for not drafting normative acts on the development of road construction.
Konstantin Chuichenko, head of the Kremlin's control department, said that since the start of 2010, the number of presidential orders completed on time has risen by 68 percent, with every fifth order fulfilled by its deadline.
Orders from the president and prime minister are always closely monitored, both by the Kremlin's control department and the White House's administration, said Dmitry Peskov, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's press secretary. Those who have failed in the past have lost bonuses or been given reprimands, but Peskov said he had not heard of anyone being fired.
A list of those who have been fined for missing deadlines will be given to the Kremlin, but whether it is published is a question for Medvedev's administration, Peskov said.
The Health and Social Development Ministry has not fired anyone for such violations, spokeswoman Sofia Malyavina. "We try to complete all orders on time," she said.
It is possible that some people with disciplinary infractions have faced administrative fines, but punishments have never gone so far as termination, Transportation Ministry spokesman Timur Khikmatov said. The ministry is among the leaders on fulfilling government orders, he added.
The current bureaucratic system is so enormous that it is unclear whom exactly should be punished, said Pavel Kudyukin, a lecturer on public administration at the Higher School of Economics. The president gives orders to the prime minister, who then hands them to the responsible deputy prime minister, who in turn passes them to the person directly responsible for their completion, he said, adding that it is often unclear at what level an order is getting bogged down.
Kudyukin said he thought that sluggish work was a problem faced by the current president as well as his predecessor, and that if a list does appear, it will probably be filled with fairly random people whom the government has been wanting to fire for some time but lacked a reason.