Zybunovskaya Natalya V.

A sociological study conducted by a team of researchers at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) in 2026 revealed a substantial rise in the number of digital submissions to regulatory and supervisory authorities by citizens in recent years. At the same time, although digital interaction has certain advantages, such as increased accessibility of the regulatory and supervisory authorities and reduced material costs, citizens’ feedback highlights difficulties in using it. It also reveals that formal responses to requests often lack information on the actions taken in response to enquiries. Citizens who lack sufficient digital skills, such as rural residents and older adults, are significantly limited in their ability to submit requests to the RSAs electronically. To ensure the continued success of digital interactions between the RSAs and citizens, it is necessary to continuously improve digital literacy and refine organizational processes for submitting electronic requests to the RSAs. At the same time, it is important to maintain the option of submitting applications in person.

The article summarizes the findings of the authors’ sociological investigation into how Russian citizens and private economic entities view the actions of regulatory and supervisory authorities. Various factors influence the trust level in regulatory and supervisory bodies. For citizens, this primarily means making sure that the control and supervisory authorities safeguard the values that are protected by law and that requests for their assistance in defending those values (such as life, health, property, the environment, etc.) are successful. For private economic entities, it refers to the existence or absence of material and administrative expenses related to the operations of control and supervisory bodies, the excessiveness of mandatory requirements, and the customer focus of regulatory and supervisory bodies. The article was prepared as part of a state assignment by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA).

The article considers the importance and role of trade unions in protecting labor rights and workers' interests. The activity of the trade union movement should be an element of the social protection, contribute to the solution of issues of social justice, observance of the labor rights of the working population, the involvement of citizens to work with official employment. At present among wage workers there is a need for strengthening of the social protection, in particular, it is an issue of inadequacy of measures stipulated by the legislation to ensure protection of social and labor rights of citizens, shortcomings in the practical implementation of guarantees at the enterprise level. Alongside with that, the research indicates the weakness of the modern trade union movement, especially in private-owned enterprises. The number of employees participating in the discussion and decisionmaking regarding the functioning of the enterprise is reducing. The number of trade union organizations and, accordingly, the number of employees who have membership in them, has decreased noticeably.

Improving the quality of public and municipal services provided by the government and local self-government agencies is one of the key imperatives towards improving governance in Russia. The most important indicator of improving its effectiveness is the level of citizens satisfaction being the recipients of these services. The article presents the main results of studying the level of general citizen satisfaction with the quality of work by the activities of government agencies in this area which were obtained in a study conducted by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in 2013. These results are analyzed and compared with data obtained in similar studies in previous years.