The paper presents the results of a study conducted in 2018 in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia. The big part of the territory of this region is located in the Arctic, which has a low population density and large distances between settlements, which increases the importance of public consent for the effectiveness of public administration. The aim of the study was to determine the level of transparency of public authorities in their interaction with civil society. The authors did a corpus-based content analysis of administrative regulations and conduct the questionnaire survey (N=439). It has been established that Russian civil society has a request to participate in the adoption of state decisions, but at the same time, citizens are not ready to fully implement public control.