Conceptualization of the task of information support of strategic planning processes at the regional level

At present, improving the quality of strategic planning at the regional level is one of the top priority tasks for the government authorities in the Russian Federation. It is mainly connected with the necessity of improving information maintenance of the process as the key element of the management cycle (analysis, planning, execution) determining the target parameters of social and economic development of the region. The study involves analysis of the legal and regulatory framework of strategic management and the system of strategic planning instruments in the Russian Federation. The authors point out that their development includes both official procedures and content stages of determining parameters of strategic management of the regional development. Improvement of the effectiveness of their implementation may be achieved by applying formalized methods for describing the object of management and the process of strategic planning itself. The study highlights and describes its main stages: goal setting (determines the directions of the region’s development with the consideration of numerous levels of administration, goals of development and the criteria for their achievement), scenario forecasting (considers probable variants of changes in internal and external factors), creating an indicative plan (provides for the quantitative characteristics of the desired state of the regional system) and regulating (determines the vector of control actions directed towards correction of the indicator values observed). It is pointed out that in practice the above mentioned stages can overlap in time and be repeated many times in order to update the process. The stages are directly implemented through the set of functions described in the article with the key stages involving development of strategic decisions and making strategic choices. Thus, it is these functions that are very often the least formalized ones and that demand appropriate information support. Within the study, a number of groups of sources of structured and poorly structured information were identified (including the results of surveys, expert evaluation, etc.). As a whole, the formed information environment of the decision-maker involves both information sources and the interrelation between the stages of strategizing, as well as the strategic planning instruments.