Why digitising communities is vital for Ukraine’s reconstruction and development

By YEGOR STEFANOVYCH, Chairman of the Board of the NGO Ukrainian Foundation for Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving, Coordinator of the ONOVA Ukraine’s Renovation League

Ukraine has 1,469 territorial communities, which include 27,833 settlements. Of these, 409 are urban, 435 are rural and 625 are village settlements.

Not all of them actively used digital tools even before the war as part of the State Strategy for Regional Development 2021-2027, especially rural and village communities.Some may argue that this is not the right time for digitalisation, and that we should instead focus on rebuilding destroyed homes, roads and institutions. But in my opinion, now is the time to actively digitise communities, and to do so in the context of reconstruction.

Benefits of digitisation for community residents

Digitisation is first and foremost about the municipality opening up to its residents. It is a specific two-way communication between the community leaders and the residents, understanding their needs and wishes and finding the best ways to address them.

The easier it is for residents to communicate with the community leadership, the better the management decisions will be. This was the case before the start of the full-scale war, and now it is becoming the main indicator of specific joint work between the leadership and the residents.

Moreover, digitalisation is not just about providing convenient services here and now. It is about a strategic vision of the development of the community.

The logical and transparent justification of a comprehensive recovery and development plan for each community that needs it should be based solely on analysing specific data that can be collected and properly evaluated by the community, at least partially digitised.

I would like to remind you that digital transformation and digitalisation of the regions has been a priority for the government even before 24 February 2022.

In particular, the transfer of public services online and the digitalisation of processes are provided for in the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, the State Strategy for Regional Development, the Economic Strategy and ministerial plans. Millions of Ukrainians have appreciated the work of Diia and the convenience of Administrative Services Centres (ASCs).

The process has been uneven for two reasons. First, new e-services have been hampered by a lack of funding. Decentralisation requires municipalities to rely mainly on their own budgets, and funds for such services are often allocated on a residual basis.

Second, there was (and still is) resistance to change, exacerbated by the low technical and intellectual capacity of many communities. They say there is no money to buy new equipment and no job for a technical specialist (not to mention the salary). They cannot bring in a specialist from outside, so they will put this off until better times.

In the near future, the Government will approve the procedure for developing, implementing and monitoring the Plan for the Reconstruction and Development of Regions and Territorial Communities, developed by the Ministry of Community Development, Territories and Infrastructure.

“The monitoring of the implementation of the plan for the restoration and development of regions may be carried out, among other things, based on the unified digital integrated information and analysis system for the management of the process of restoration of real estate and infrastructure and/or the information and telecommunication system – a unified geographic information system for monitoring and evaluating the development of regions and territorial communities after its implementation,” the document says.

In this case, digitalisation becomes a tool for transparency in reconstructing municipalities and Ukraine as a whole. We owe it to the international donors already providing funds (including for digitisation, as I will discuss below), to the state, and ultimately to ourselves.

And I hope that the internal resistance of the leadership (partly due to a lack of understanding of the future benefits) will subside.

Despite other priorities, the Ministry of Digital Transformation continues to support communities – the Digital Communities Forum held in Lviv at the end of March was dedicated to the issues and challenges of digitalisation in the regions.

In particular, they discussed the need to create the institution of CDTOs (Chief Digital Transformation Officers) in the municipalities.

In fact, there are many projects to help communities go digital, including financial support – there are separate programmes from USAID, U-LEAD, GIZ and other donor organisations.

The E-Governance for Accountability and Participation (EGAP) programme, funded by Switzerland and implemented by the Eastern Europe Foundation in cooperation with the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Innovabridge Foundation, is ongoing.

These programmes have experts and mentors who help community representatives involved in implementing the processes to work with what is available, to formulate needs and to develop projects for which they can then apply for funding.

Here is one of the many examples of community work currently underway. Makariv Village Council (Kyiv region), together with cBrain (Denmark) and the NGO Ukrainian Foundation for Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving, launched a pilot project to digitise the community in January this year.

They have signed an agreement under which cBrain will provide Makariv with a pilot project of specialised software, developed in-house, free of charge, which will cover most of the workflows of the village council: electronic document management, processing of citizen requests and complaints, provision of electronic services and documents, corporate email, etc. The NGO will provide organisational support.

Why did the community start digitising now? Before the project began, Anatoliy Karbovskyi, deputy head of the village council, said that the need for an IT solution to enable fast and high-quality communication and interaction with the public was long overdue.

There are many facilities in Makariv that need to be rebuilt after last year’s events. Denmark is one of the leaders in implementing digital solutions in government at various levels. Therefore, he believes it is particularly valuable to gain knowledge and understanding of technologies from the most advanced and to implement them in his community.

The initial training of specialists within the project has already been completed. We are now moving into the testing phase, uploading the structure, templates, assigning user roles, etc.

The project will last until the end of July, but I am sure that Makariv, committed to qualitative changes within the community, will not leave this path. And in a year, the community will share its experiences and exciting results.

Once again, this is just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of real activity in the current environment. I am confident that our joint work in the Makarivska community will be a good example and that we will be able to scale up and popularise the concept of community digitisation throughout Ukraine.

For the whole country, the digitisation of communities is an opportunity to quickly and efficiently optimise the work on the post-war development strategy.

For each community, especially small and medium-sized ones, it is an opportunity to create a comprehensive development plan as the key document for many years. It also means unhindered delivery of services to residents, budget optimisation and investment attraction.

This will help create regional clusters, innovation parks and hubs, and lay the foundations for communities across the country to live greener, more energy-efficient lives and develop their economies.

Everyone, without exception, and especially small communities, must see and seize development opportunities, even in these difficult times.

Ekonomichna Pravda