Ukraine’s ongoing process to connect all government bodies electronically and take all public services digital is running into delays, experts have told the Kyiv Post.
Various online platforms to be used by state bodies are being introduced in a “chaotic and fragmentary” manner without a common vision, said Volodymyr Flonts, chairman at NGO e-Democracy and software engineer at state procurement service ProZorro. He added that the laws on e-governance, while in force, need further refinement.
“There is no common vision or any clear plan,” he said in an email. “One of the largest launches of this year — the e-court platform — has been postponed indefinitely.”
Experts say that this lack of a clear roadmap is the biggest obstacle to digitizing the work of the Ukrainian government. Solving this problem will be a major challenge for lawmakers and the various ministries and state agencies. Digitizing municipal services at the local level will be an even bigger challenge.
National level
The planned backbone of Ukraine’s e-governance, Trembita, named after a traditional horn, is an IT system modeled on Estonia’s X-road platform. It would allow state agencies to quickly exchange up-to-date information from their respective databases and enable all public services to be processed electronically.
Trembita was developed in partnership with Estonia’s e-Government Academy and the European Union delegation in Ukraine. The core of the platform is now finished, has its security certification, and is awaiting implementation.
Oleksandr Ryzhenko, the head of the State Agency for E-Governance of Ukraine, said in an interview that last year’s challenge was to launch an operable electronic system, while this year’s challenge is to hook it up to the multitude of registries and databases being used by the various parts of the government. Getting everyone on the same page will not be easy, he said.
Government bodies are all working at different speeds, with different deadlines, amid constantly shifting standards, said Jaanika Merilo, an e-governance expert and adviser to the Dnipro Oblast administration.
“There are different informatization projects whose deadlines passed and they weren’t created,” said Merilo.
Ivar Tallo, a founder of the e-Governance Academy and an international expert of the European Union project Pravo-Justice, who evaluated Ukraine’s e-governance reforms, said that the lack of major registries was an obstacle to further development. Furthermore, “major ministries have not embraced digital procedures yet in their day to day activities,” he said. A large amount of data remains to be digitized.
Legislation is in the works to create common standards for state registries, of which there are more than 350, and link them into a unified system. The bill passed the Rada’s Communication and Informatization committee in October and is awaiting to be debated by parliament.
Despite this legislation, several experts said that interoperability is not as prioritized as it should be by the government. Flontz called this work “insufficient,” saying that Trembita could be a good system but that there are a bunch of other systems already operating in parallel with it.
“This ‘zoo’ does not contribute to transparent and planned development,” said Flontz.
Ryzhenko said that top-down integration of government IT is more feasible in authoritarian regimes than it is in a country like Ukraine. The problem of trying to herd various state bodies together comes out of the way that the Ukrainian government is set up, he added.
The agency has come under fire before. The Accounting Chamber of Ukraine released a January audit, finding that the agency “failed to effectively use Hr 83.7 million (about $3.08 million), of which 46 percent was spent unproductively, since the electronic system was not working as intended.” The audit also said that some of the agency’s procurements violated regulations.
Ryzhenko said that the agency missed deadlines due to the nature of IT work and because the deadlines often depended on the work of other bodies. He added that the agency expects to work more efficiently in the future.
Not everything is in a sad state. The country already offers 120 e-services through a central portal, with 50 more expected to come online in 2019. Flontz said that the recent launch of an electronic system for drivers, as well as the preparation for the launch of a unified electronic identification system look encouraging.
Tallo did not agree that implementation was as sloppy as some other experts said. According to Tallo, the political desire to catch up very quickly to more digitized governments led to unrealistic expectations, especially in a country as complex as Ukraine. This government has been doing a good job, he said.
Local level
There are also challenges with e-governance at the local level, said experts. Merilo said that 90 percent of cities do not have up to date electronic registries, which are being implemented on a voluntary basis.
Most of the public, especially in smaller population centers, still does not fully understand electronic services and many local government officials don’t want or understand digitization, according to Ryzhenko.
The best-known local platform is iGov, now controlled by Dnipro Oblast and used in 63 towns and cities in Ukraine. The platform enables residents to apply for passports and licenses, sign up for a doctor’s appointment, register their place of residence and family composition, and access a variety of other services online.
Being government-controlled should allow iGov to link to a series of municipal registries and become a one-stop-shop service for local residents and businesses, said Merilo.
Not everyone is as optimistic. Dmytro Dubilet, former IT director at PrivatBank, who developed iGov before handing it over to Dnipro Oblast and no longer actively works with it, said that he sees iGov’s expansion being obstructed by the government.
“Unfortunately, the central authorities have done a lot to ensure that regional assets on iGov are not developing as quickly as we would like,” Dubilet wrote in an email. “There were a number of cases when services were launched, and then it was instructed from Kyiv to close them immediately.”
Dubilet did not provide additional information, saying he wanted to keep the backlash against iGov to a minimum. Merilo said that she was not aware of this kind of obstruction.
