Opening address of editor-in-chief.

Russian strategy in assisting the legitimate leadership of Syria in their fight against terrorist groups has shown the beginning of a qualitatively new stage: not only the USA, but also Russia can now restore law and order in the most important regions of the world. The next Russia’s step in gaining back its role and recognized status of superpower shall be organization of successful reconstruction of Syria’s economy, destroyed by the terrorist war, in conditions of critical limitations of the Syrian national resources for these purposes. This requires elaboration and implementation of Russia’s equivalent of the Marshall Plan. It is proposed to concentrate Russian economic aid and investments in those sectors of the Syrian infrastructure development, that are the most promising for the Russian and Syrian interests, with the key positioning of objects restored or created with Russian participation. The basic imperative here is adjusting in Syria a new model of the Russian opportunities realization in key sectors (nodes) of the global strategic projects implementation as the new format of the Middle East development.

The article presents a macroeconomic analysis of the main trends of the CIS countries’ economic development for the past 25 years, the author carried out a comprehensive comparative analysis in terms of GDP, the level of income and investments, as well as evaluated the structure and sources of economic growth. The paper proposes and substantiates a number of classification criteria, on the basis of which the countries were ranked.

The subject of the study was the problem of elaborating the economic growth policy in Russia. The economy’s exit from recession requires justification of government policy measures contributing not only to overcome the crisis, but also to bring the economy to a path of sustainable economic growth at a given rate. The article deals with positions of economists, representing two major camps in their views on the economic policy of growth — expansionists and restrictionists. The first are in favor of active stimulation of the economy by means of budgetary and monetary policy, while the latter profess policy of cutting expenditures and carrying out individual reforms which, in their view, will improve the quality of economy functioning (judicial reform, privatization, etc.). Applying comparative analysis, based on the facts of economic growth and the crisis in Russia, the author substantiates the necessity of forming a new model of growth for our country, indicates strategic directions of such policy and presents scientific arguments that confirm this choice. For example, it is shown that for promoting investment in the first phase of the exit from recession it is necessary not only to build-up the rate of investment, but to stimulate aggregate consumption and to restore the level of citizens’ incomes. The existing choice between expansion and restriction as types of policy is not so unequivocal, because there are serious constraints on monetary expansion, and to consider this kind of policy in Russia apart from other systemic effects that should be commensurate with this policy model while implementing it, is inappropriate. Economic policy of a new growth should be based on the presence of feedback and influences in the economic system and should correctly evaluate the current status against established strategic guidelines.

Today, the basic managerial task is to strategize scientific work within the Federal Law № 172-FZ “On strategic planning in the Russian Federation”, including research mapping and schematization, connectivity analysis, resource maneuvering. “Digital Revolution” has created a tool of working with information arrays — BigData, which made it possible to structure scientific research, separating “human” and “inhuman” components. If scientific problem can be solved transferring BigData into DeepData, we should attribute it to scientific surveys (science study). Artificial intelligence today is already solving this type of problems better than a human being. As scientific research (science research) we shall consider creation of something new that has no obvious predecessors. Modern A.I. cannot carry out such work, as it goes beyond the Turing test. It is prerogative of a man, capable to distinguish another from new and important from unimportant. Separately we consider scientific investigation (science investigation): OverSite, search for alternative ways of scientific thinking development and the problem of changing scientific paradigm, post-Baconian cognition. Ranking of science through separating the levels of study, research and investigation is the basis for scientific research scaling, which is an integral part of the mechanism for scientific research strategic management.

The article deals with the problem of improving management of projects and programs in the public sector. The role of public organizations in forming and developing this discipline of management is discussed. On the basis of published international research data the main reasons, that may hinder successful achievement of implementation purposes of the government projects and programs, are provided. The article describes the measures aimed, according to the US experts, at providing control of the costs rising and reduction of unnecessary tasks duplication in the public sector. Among them — centralization of efforts aimed at improving management of public projects and programs, involvement of their managers in planning and elaborating management solutions, promotion of the program manager’s professional prestige and specification of his career trajectory in government organizations, greater attention to training and formation of program managers, definition of requirements to certification of appropriate specialists, creating professional community of projects and programs managers within the government. The paper presents legislative initiatives, introduced in the US Congress in order to increase responsibility for programs management at the federal level. In the final part of the article some conclusions and recommendations are given, that may be useful in the national practice of managing government projects and programs, based on the accumulated international experience.

The world is changing right before our eyes. We’ve reached a transition to the fifth and sixth scientific and technological mode of life, unprecedented before power centers in social networks have appeared, wars have become hybrid, however atrocities on conventional wars have not decreased. Everything has come in motion, world development has reached the point of bifurcation. The author decided to consider the possible path of humanity’s movement, as on this primarily depends whether to be or not to be for Russia.

The author studies the global development scenario up to the XXV century, when the population will reach 50 billion people. He considers the option, when the population is located in areas favorable for living and all manufacturing is transferred into the space. This will allow to minimize radically chemical, biological and thermal load on the planet. For realizing scenario there is a necessity for key technologies that provide space cargo flow, labor globalization technologies, as well as 3D-construction technologies. The article provides a description of these technologies. It is shown that the main obstacle to expansion into space is rocket technology, which is fundamentally unsuitable for providing space cargo traffic at the level of several billion tons a year. The author considers possibilities of promising technology for bringing out goods into space via stratospheric spaceports. Three groups of future technologies, crucial for development of civilization, are being actively developed. Soon they will become mass technologies, providing a solution to major global challenges.

Digital technologies are gradually becoming an integral part of each sphere of everyday life for citizens and economic entities of the Russian Federation. This opens up enormous opportunities for creating new and modernizing the existing industries, for high-tech level of interaction between society and state authorities, for increasing Russia’s competitiveness in the world market, and ultimately — for preserving and consolidating the information sovereignty of the Russian state. Digital transformation may cause a new variant of economic relations (Digital economy), a new level of relations between society and the state (Digital government), creation of high-tech infrastructure (Digital space). It seems that the most important goal of the next stage of the Russian Federation’s development could become creation of a Digital society.

IT is the fastest growing sector of the economy, where information is the product: description of technologies, software and services, digital multimedia material, e-books, patents, etc. Payment systems also represent a kind of information. If previously the period of technological structures change constituted hundreds of years, now it happens during one person’s life. Gartner company conducted a survey and published the list of priority directions of IT development in 2017: artificial Intelligence and deep learning; intelligent applications; intellectual things; virtual and augmented reality; digital counterparts (dynamic program models of real objects and systems); blockchain (cryptocurrency) and distributed expenses book; conversational systems; network applications and architecture; digital platforms; adaptive security architecture.