Problems of the public involvement into the strategic planning in Russia: are digital technologies a solution?

In the article we describe two main groups of problems of public involvement in strategic planning process and show that they lead to restrictions of public participation in strategic planning process. Discussion of the strategic challenges and responses stated by real stakeholders doesn’t happen. In what extente these problems are solved with the help of modern digital technologies? Analyzing experience of a number of Russian regions we show that the main reason for low activity of public discussion is the low level of credibility of the public to the existing institutes of public participation transferred to Internet space, fed by unavailability of public authorities to horizontal (communication, dialogue) discussion model. At the same time digital technologies really expand a range of opportunities for horizontal interaction of the government and stakeholders in the course of a strategic planning, simplify it. Digital technologies organize communication of people in the territory, promoting formation of communities that allows to work in the course of a strategic planning not with opinions of certain people, but with communities in which the put-forward ideas and opinions have undergone active discussion on various “digital” communicative platforms...