Modern changes in the Russian economy are largely associated with the growth of external challenges and risks. In conditions of limited access to many technologies, goods, services and sources of investment, a comprehensive definition of development priorities becomes a serious and multi-level task. This article describes the problems of the functioning of strategic planning systems. It considers the issues of their adaptation to changing domestic and international conditions. The author assumes the need to build them as complex self-regulating systems. The study also describes a foreign experience in the planning field and briefly analyses the development of foreign models and their structural organization. Else it considers the problems of lags associated with introducing or transforming strategic planning systems. The study finds that this process requires systematic work and cannot be an emergency response to emerging threats. The conclusion draws that strategic planning systems are necessary to ensure socio-economic and technological development. However, depending on the changing situation, the role of planning in economic policy may increase and weaken, which should not lead to the breakdown of the system itself. For implementing these conditions, it is necessary to have an appropriate infrastructure that determines the optimal interaction of institutions, allowing for point regulation while limiting the total number of functional elements.