Information basis of authorities actions at the local level

The analysis of local self-government practices conducted on the basis of the Laboratory for Local Administration field researches and scientific literature study reveals the information deficit of local authorities. The Federal State Statistics Service provides full information for federal and regional authorities, while substantial part of statistics is too aggregated or superficial to be used by municipalities. In accordance with these facts the following subject of the investigation was formulated - used by local authorities mechanisms of collecting information about socio-economic conditions in the municipal unit.The purpose of the article is to identify all the sources of information that are used by local self-government bodies to tackle the problem of information deficit and to fill the gaps in state statistics. In order to achieve the goal both theoretical and empirical materials were used. One of the sources is interdepartmental communication with the local offices of government authorities such as police, migration service, pension fund, tax service and others. Another tool is to collect data themselves, but such statistics is difficult to gather, because local authorities are not empowered to do this, so natural and legal persons have not to provide data to them. Furthermore, the internal municipal statistics would be illegitimate and practically not applicable for usage. So, to solve the problem of information defi cit, at least the following measures should be implemented: 1) to obligate government authorities to provide information to the local self-government, 2) to improve the horizontal information exchange between local authorities and territorial offices of government authorities in the municipality; 3) to legalize internal statistics of local self-government bodies (now state authorities accept only collected by State Statistics Service figures, which are often incorrect).