Strategic Planning at Federal Level: Main Elements and Structural and Logical Connections

Abstract

A significant problem of the organization of strategic planning is the lack of a unified methodology for the development of strategic planning documents. At the same time, coherence is not achieved between the accepted documents on targets, tasks, and time frames. The author supports the view that it is necessary to adopt a special normative document that removes these contradictions, and, as a contribution to its development, a number of methodological solutions are proposed, without which the development of a unified methodological approach seems problematic. The article summarizes the practice of federal strategic planning (25 current and 5 discontinued federal strategies are analyzed). It has been established that when developing federal strategies, a wide variety of approaches are used to establish consistency and interrelationships between the elements of strategies. The relationship between the elements is unclear or completely absent. In addition, the interpretations of different elements (goals, directions, priorities, tasks) often do not differ, and are also characterized by features not peculiar to these elements. As a result, the strategy turns into an enumeration of all possible common intentions with an indistinctly expressed, and therefore difficult to control end result. The adaptation of the mission concept from corporate strategic management to state management is considered appropriate. The essence of individual elements of the strategic plan is clarified, and their concepts that are absent in federal legislation (such as direction, priority) are formulated. A structural and logical scheme of the strategic plan is proposed, linking all the elements of the plan into a single system — from the mission to the tasks, as well as containing recommendations on the most appropriate placement of these elements in various types of strategic planning documents. The implementation of the proposed approach will help streamline the development and presentation of strategies, make the choice of strategic goals and directions more reasonable.