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Реестры исполнителей услуг в социальной сфере как инструменты конкурентного отбора поставщиков
The article presents the results of a study on the role of service provider registries in the social sector in ensuring competitive selection of providers within the framework of the experiment on the implementation of gov-ernment social contracting. The experiment’s objectives are to improve the quality and ac-cessibility of social services for citizens by in-volving non-governmental providers, including through direct citizen participation in their se-lection. Under the conditions of the experiment, citizens can only choose providers from regis-tries of service providers, which are formed by the authorized bodies of the constituent enti-ties of the Russian Federation. This condition makes the registries a mandatory tool for se-lecting providers and suggests that, to some extent, they should disclose information about the services and providers to citizens. Based on this assumption, the research question was formulated: do the existing registries provide citizens with a competitive selection of provid-ers, and do the authorized bodies see such a role for the registries? In the article, competi-tive selection refers to the process of finding a suitable provider based on the ability to evalu-ate and compare information about services and providers. The focus on the perspectives of authorized bodies is due to their key role in defining the objectives for creating the regis-tries. To answer the research question, three tasks were undertaken: 1) an assessment of how well the registries disclose the necessary information about services and providers from the perspective of consumer rights; 2) an ex-amination of the formats in which the registries are made available to users online, as well as the presence of tools for searching and com-paring services and providers; 3) a summary of the experiences of using the registries, based on semi-structured interviews with representa-tives of authorized bodies, including the objec-tives they pursued when creating the registries. The theoretical basis of the study is the principles of information disclosure for consumers outlined within the concept of “soft” regu-lation of citizen behavior, as well as research examining the role of such registries in provid-er selection. The conclusion is that the exist-ing registries do not provide citizens with the ability to compare services and evaluate pro-viders. This is because the authorized bodies did not set such a goal when creating the reg-istries. The registries are mainly used for re-cording providers authorized to participate in government social contracting. However, the authorized bodies do not rule out the possibil-ity of using the registries as tools for selecting providers if tasked with such a goal.