This article analyzes the new tool of receiving feedback about the quality of social services — the Independent Quality Assessment. This tool is claimed to be “a form of social control”, one of the demonstration of public participation in social sphere administration. The object of research was social care centers for families and children. A key element of the Independent Quality Assessment is a Public Council of the executive authority, non-governmental organizations, and individual consumers of social services and the expert community should play an active role. Last but not least, an independent assessment concerning their position depends whether it will be an effective social institution, promoting the development of civil society in Russia. Independent Quality Assessment prospects are determined by the state ability and readiness to carry on a dialogue with the individual and collective consumers of social services, and take into account their wishes during the development and correction of social initiatives, of which it is the author. Despite the fact that the full implementation of the Independent Quality Assessment in the social sphere was held in 2015, we may already say that this new tool has been tested in many regions of Russian Federation, including Moscow. Experience of implementation of independent assessment provided information, not only about the need to improve research bases, but also about the institutional traps that can lie in wait of this method of receiving “feedback”. In this article, various issues of Independent Quality Assessment implementation are considered in terms of the likelihood of institutional traps, and options are proposed for actions aimed at minimizing the risk of their rooting in the further practice of evaluation studies.
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Doudchenko et al. (2017) studied this question.