Ukraine is embracing e-government and is placing the services of more than 60 ministries and agencies on one portal: iGov.org.ua.
The volunteer-run website went online in mid-June with 22 state functions currently available. 45 services are to be available “very soon,” while 484 are in the pipeline as of July 2. They are divided into services for citizens and business entities.
Individuals can, for example, register the birth of a baby, a new car with the police, or give notice of forming a civic organization. Businesses in turn can register notices of starting construction work, apply for various licenses, and access government databases on enterprises.
About 60 different local and state government bodies will provide e-services through the system. More than 50 key state documents are planned to be launched online by the end of 2015.
“The idea of creating a platform for providing e-services was on the cards for a long time, and it’s great that it is finally being implemented,” says Dmytro Dubilet, an information technology director at PrivatBank and a project manager at iGov.org.ua . The platform was built with cooperation from the government, IT companies, and tech developers.
Since volunteers are responsible for development, the only project cost is server maintenance. Dubilet says that the platform uses cloud servers to store data. “It doesn’t cost much, so I pay out of my own pocket,” he says.
One significant drawback of the system is that certificates that get ordered online must be collected at the relevant government institution. Dubilet says “we need to negotiate with the governmental institutions so that they begin to accept electronic copies.”
While iGov.org.ua seeks to provide e-services on the national level, Lviv’s city council has also introduced its own online platform for providing e-services. It’s still in beta-testing mode with more than 800 residents signed up for testing.
Tymofiy Aleksandronets, the head of the IT office at Lviv city council, says that there are 288 services that the city council provides and the goal is to put them all online as soon as possible.
He added that many certificates still have to be submitted in hard copy. Unless governmental bodies that demand those certificates change their practices and start accepting electronic copies, it will be hard to put all the services online.
Jaanika Merilo, who actively involved in the development of Lviv’s platform as an advisor to the city’s mayor, says that the e-services like the one in Lviv are currently being developed in more than 15 other cities in Ukraine.
She is also a member of ICT Competence Center, a non-profit group that supports building e-government in Ukraine.
Five major banks, PrivatBank, Oshchad Bank , Bank Mykhaylivsky, Platinum Bank and FIDOBANK are integrating their systems with national e-government portals through an initiative called BankID.
Dmytro Dubilet says that it was his initiative to emulate similar systems in Sweden and several other progressive countries. Even though only five banks are currently enabling their clients to use iGov.org.ua and Lviv’s e-services platform, Dubilet hopes that all Ukrainian banks will sign up for the initiative by the end of the year and the next step for government services can be identification using smartphones and electronic signatures in the coming months.
Kyiv Post staff writer BozhenaSheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe .
