The 8th Perm Forum, entitled “Person. Society. Nation”, came to a close on April 21st

1970 participants from 53 cities in Russia and 11 countries around the world registered for the forum. More than 150 journalists reported on 29 of the program’s sessions and discussions.

The basic concept behind the forum was two vectors: one of which charted the process of returning some of the powers held by the federal authorities to the regions, business and society, while the other was concerned with the quality of human capital, which affects the social sustainability and effectiveness of the government.

On April 19th, the members of the group dedicated to developing an “Open Government” system, headed by Counsellor to the President of the Russian Federation Mikhail Abyzov, presented the results of their work and held discussions in the forum’s six working groups.

The moderator of the first day of the forum, Sergey Aleksashenko, Director of Macroeconomic Research at the National Research University Higher School of Economics emphasized the importance of the emergence of an institution that is “prepared to cooperate with a wide-range of experts, and to create channels for feedback, which have been noticeably lacking”. The expert emphasized that “the “Open Government” concept represents a chance for society to have greater influence on the authorities. If we don’t believe in this chance, we may miss it”.

The mechanisms and instruments for that system developed during the course of the discussion will be presented to the “Open Government” working group for consideration.

The second day of the forum was entitled “Human and Social Capital”, and Alexander Auzan, the President of the Social Contract National Project Institute served as moderator. Auzan identified three key results that those mechanisms must reach: “the elite must agree upon rules for everyone, and not exceptions for themselves”, “non-governmental, civil and commercial organizations must outlive their creators”, and “control over military and law enforcement agencies must be collective, not selective”.

The experts of the “Environment”, “Media”, “Politics and Civil Activism”, “Economic Reform and Entrepreneurship”, “Education” and “Culture” working groups worked out a long-term agenda for the development of Russia and the transition to an “open access” model.

The experts were invited to facilitate further discussion of the results of the April 20th discussion in the media.

The program for the third day was dedicated to discussing the future evolution of the Perm Region. As part of the Perm 3.0 conference, the experts discussed this wide-ranging territorial development project aimed at capitalizing humanitarian innovations.

The moderator of the forum for April 21st, Alexander Pochinok, said that the event had been extremely valuable, and had given people an opportunity to “think and find solution”. “I would very much like for this forum not to end, and for all of us to understand that we must do everything possible to spend the year until the next one thinking, acting, and getting the result we can. After all, we already understand what to do”, said the member of the Federation Council from the Perm Region.

In addition to the main forum program, 25 lectures by its speakers were held at Perm’s institutions of higher learning. More specifically, they were held at the Perm State Pedagogical University, the Perm State Scientific Research University, the Perm State Pharmacological Academy, and many more. Gleb Pavlovsky, the president of the Foundation for Effective Politics, journalist Irina Yasina, Greg Williams, the Executive Editor of Wired magazine, Alexey Sitnikov, the Director of Administration and Development at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and twenty more lecturers spoke to a total audience of almost 2,000 students. The subjects of their lectures included architecture, journalism, social policy, digital communities, macroeconomics and many more in the context of the overall project of the “Person. Society. Nation” forum.

At the conclusion of the three-day program, the Governor of the Perm Region, Oleg Chirkunov, proposed reporting the results of the work of the discussion groups in the national and regional presses, and shared his optimistic views on the future of the forum. “I truly believe that the Perm Forum and the Perm Region has a great future. We have already done a great deal, and now we simply need to go further; each of us has to accomplish their goals step by step. I would like to thank you for your work and I sincerely hope that all of us will be optimists”.

Video recording of the discussions and the speakers presentations, as well as photographs from the forum will soon be available on the website, www.permforum.ru, in the “Wrap-up” section.