Digitalization at the time of war: how the EU assists in modernizing Ukraine

The war has been testing all of us for more than a year now. Ukrainians are being tested for courage and resilience, and their friends and allies around the world for their ability to support Ukraine, its economy, population, the Armed Forces, and stable operation of public institutions.

Digitalization is one of the areas that requires continuous support. Its importance has increased with the start of the war due to mass displacement of people, loss of homes, documents, continuous cyberattacks, and need for digital solutions to improve the army’s capacity.

Consistency of international assistance, without interruptions or long pauses, is important for proper development of digital transformation. The EU is the largest international donor of digitalization in Ukraine. Also, compared to other areas, the situation with digitalization is unique.

On March 16, the EU officially launched “EU Support for Digital Transformation of Ukraine (DT4UA)” project, the third major EU-funded project in the past seven years. The current EU4DigitalUA project will also continue until the first quarter of next year.

When EU4DigitalUA was launched in 2020, the EGOV4UKRAINE project, which helped Ukraine lay the foundation of digital transformation, was still ongoing. The Trembita data exchange system was created as a part of the project, and the concept of the State in a Smartphone and the Diia platform were developed at the very same time.

This shows the continuous process of strengthening digital transformation of Ukraine with support of the EU.

The total funding of these three projects is just under EUR 50 million; in addition, a EUR 10 million cyber security project was implemented after the war started.

Due to their consecutive and overlapping nature, a strong institutional memory has been created. Also, all of the projects were and are being implemented by the Estonia E-Governance Academy, which means that, even if the team is changing, then only by adding new experts. This creates stable contacts with the Ministry of Digital Transformation and other Ukrainian institutions.

This so-called “conveyor” with consistent EU support and permanent operators yields clear practical results. Take, for example, the examples of the wartime.

Last year, EU4DigitalUA continued to effectively work with the Ministry of Digital Transformation and actively responded to the new reality. This includes the aforementioned strengthening of cyber security of Ukrainian public institutions, and also quick development of 10 electronic services in the sphere of state registration of civil statuses: a possibility to receive copies of birth certificates, death certificates, registration or termination of marriage, etc., and also corresponding abstracts.

Recently, a new service of submission of an online application for state registration of marriage in Diia was launched.

In all these cases, the Trembita data exchange system interacts with the system of the state registration of acts of civil status: sending applications for receiving services, receiving the status of the application, time slots for marriage registration, booking the wedding ceremony time, etc.

Information systems, data exchange are something that is invisible to people. It is a different matter, however, when you sit down at your computer and receive an abstract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Private Individuals in a matter of 10 minutes. Or, if you have access to ten services related to the birth of a child.

Be that as it may, technical details, even general ones, are important for understanding the essence of digital transformation and the importance of uninterrupted work.

The DT4UA project will fully take over cooperation with the Ministry of Digital Transformation on development and maintenance of Trembita, Diia and other fundamental solutions. The same team will work with Ukrainian partners they already know well.

Development of Trembita 2.0 and increasing the system’s capacity are the key tasks.

Since its launch in 2020, over 2 billion transactions have been executed. 180 public institutions and organizations are connected to Trembita, with 179 electronic interactions established between them. These figures will increase, and the new services for citizens and business will be the visible results of that.

DT4UA will assist in developing electronic services and improving existing ones. For example, creation of a Competence Centre for E-Services Diia is in the plans. One of its tasks will include international cooperation to speed up Ukraine’s integration in the EU Digital Market, which is important considering Ukraine’s status as an EU candidate.

Vulyk, an information system automating the operation of the Administrative Services Centres, is another area of work. It was also created by the EGOV4UKRAINE project. 400 ASCs joined the system when it was created, but that turned out to be too much for the initial system’s capacity, which is why it requires an upgrade that will fix the capacity issue. In the new DT4UA project, the same team that helped ASCs adopt the system three years ago will continue working on it.

Finally, I would sum up the situation using the words that correspond to today’s reality of the wartime.

Ukrainian digital transformation has already got a strong ‘back’ – the reforms and solutions that were implemented in previous years and that helped lay the foundation of the sector’s further development. They were partially mentioned above.

However, any ‘back’ cannot remain the same. It also needs to develop and become stronger, otherwise the front will suffer, the side is what people see and use, i.e., electronic services. The front must have everything that is the newest and the best.

Therefore, strengthening of the back and higher effectiveness on the front are required.

This image is an excellent depiction of the tasks faced by the Ministry of Digital Transformation, other government authorities, and, accordingly by us, projects of international technical assistance, funded by the EU and other donors.

These tasks include continuous improvement of Trembita and Diia to ensure that people and business can get what they need in a quick and timely manner; improvement of state electronic registers, which is a very deep back, although the quality of e-services depends on the quality of registers; creation of other conditions for introduction of critically important services, for examples for war veterans. Last year, we worked with the Ministry for Veterans’ Affairs on an e-service for registration of financial assistance for veterans with a disability of 1st and 2nd groups.

This is why it is so important that a new project is launched; and it is wonderful that it is one of a series and that it will be based on the developments and expertise of the previous ones.

This gives confidence to our Ukrainian partners that the EU support of digitalization will continue. Moreover, a reliable shoulder to lean on is twice as valuable during the war.

Eurointagration.com.ua