Give it a read. It’s a very interesting story.
Alexei Mityaev, a 26-year-old Muscovite, and a group of like-minded people decided to challenge the state procurement system by entering a competition to design bike lanes — The Village found out how it ended. When a tender for drawing up an “industry scheme for bike lanes in Moscow” appeared on the state procurement website at the end of December, ordinary Muscovite Alexei Mityaev realized that no one knew better where they should go than cyclists themselves. Together with friends, he organized a Facebook group, gathered supporters, and challenged the state machine. Alexei told The Village whether outsiders can really win a tender, why all contracts go to the Research and Design Institute of the General Plan (a Moscow urban planning institute), and how to make the authorities spend at least some of the money on something worthwhile. http://www.the-village.ru/village/situation/situation/112999-lichnyy-opyt-kak-ya-poluchal-podryad-na-velodorozhki-ot-gosudarstva The guys who actually ride on bike paths decided to propose a better plan for building them themselves. They joined forces, found experts (both local and foreign), and did everything properly and well, for the benefit of the city and its residents. But they lost the competition because they didn’t have an ...FSB license. So the money once again went to NIiPI Genplana, the monopoly player in designing this kind of thing.
A vile, pointless Soviet monster (I ran into it back when I was involved with the Committee for the Protection of Muscovites and fighting infill development), devouring all the budget money allocated for design work. Bribe-taker after bribe-taker, dust, mothballs, and 90-year-old old men everywhere. Anyone can see for themselves what they’ve designed and planned just by stepping out onto the streets of Moscow and looking around. That’s how they win these tenders. To this day, maps at a certain scale are still classified as state secrets in Russia. And this “state secret,” in the age of satellites and modern surveying technology, is in fact known to absolutely everyone and, as you can see, serves only to ensure that certain firms get the juiciest contracts. RosPil (Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption project) tried to help the guys, but the FAS (Federal Antimonopoly Service) ignored our arguments. There’s a similar situation, by the way, with “FSO approval” — it is used, for example, to let Moscow City Hall squeeze competitors out of lucrative contracts for laying “Sobyanin tiles” (sidewalk paving associated with Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin) and hand everything over to its own firms.
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