Regional social infrastructure management in the system of tools used for improving the quality of life for regional population

Abstract

This paper analyzes the processes in the social sphere and the performance of operating the social infrastructure to improve the population’s quality of life in the Russian regions. Particular attention has been paid to the role of organizational and administrative components, which include the regulation of social infrastructure institutions, planning, and programming that affect the performance of infrastructure facilities utilization. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of social infrastructure management through the congruence of immediate results (dynamics of indicators for social services) and final results (parameters of the population’s quality of life). The working hypothesis of the study was a breach of infrasystemic principle in the infrastructural support for improving the population’s quality of life in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation because of the insufficient effectiveness of public administration. The work on this paper involved using a set of methodological approaches, such as structured, factorial, systemic, and evolutionary approaches, to substantiate the conceptual framework, prepare the method-based approaches, and determine the impact made by the changes in the parameters of social infrastructure facilities on provided services and shifts in the indicators of the population’s quality of life. The paper proposes a method-based approach to quantifying the effectiveness of organizational and administrative components by using the diagnostics of sufficiency in the implementation of infrasystemic principle for the operation of social infrastructure based on elasticity coefficients. The proposed approach and analytical data obtained in the areas, such as health care, education, trade, housing & utilities, culture & sport, allowed ranking the regions of the Ural Federal District and identifying the areas of insufficient effectiveness in the organizational and administrative mechanism used for improving the population’s quality of life as the basis for developing practical recommendations for the executive branch of constituent entities of the Russian Federation and adjustment of socioeconomic policies.