Over the past three months, Mykhailo Fedorov has been in the spotlight of the media and the public. The youngest minister of the Ukrainian government, Fedorov leads the newly-created Ministry of Digital Transformation.
At the age of 28, Fedorov is responsible for implementing an idea known as The State in a Smartphone, a big election promise of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The major goal is to transfer 100% of state services online in the next three to five years, which Fedorov and the newly hired 133 employees of the ministry are working on.
“If a service isn’t available online, it doesn’t exist at all,” Fedorov said about his ministry’s end goal.
So far, not everything has been working out as Fedorov expected. In August, when he was still a lawmaker from Zelensky’s party, Servant of the People, Fedorov and his team prepared 35 draft laws for Ukraine’s e-government and tech industry. The plan was to adopt them by the end of the year.
But when he became the minister on Aug. 29, his vision shifted. Now Fedorov relies more on technology rather than on legal changes, which take too long to make.
“If we will start changing laws, trying to pass them through every reading, then our country will see The State in a Smartphone in 20 years,” he said.
As a result, one of the decisions was to try to bring in digital services using the gaps in existing legislation.
Enter Diia
The ministry is launching Diia (Ukrainian for “action”), a mobile application for state services. At the start, it will provide two services: electronic driver’s licenses and car registration documents.
On Dec.16, some 20,000 drivers who registered for beta testing will start testing the application in real life. If the testing is successful, in February 2020 the app will be available for everybody.
“We will look at how many people are using it, and what is their culture of using online public services, so we can plan our actions for the next year,” said Fedorov. “We will understand if we are doing it the right way or not.”
The target is for Diia to have at least one million active users by the end of 2020, but ideally three million, according to Fedorov. This explains the choice of the first services.
“This will help us to have a big audience. What driver wouldn’t want to always have their driving license and car registration documents in their smartphone?” said Fedorov.
Other government electronic services will be gradually added to Diia.
Results and plans
In parallel to launching Diia, the ministry filed 20 draft laws on digitalizing the country to the parliament. Some proposed amendments to existing laws were already adopted.
For example, an important law on electronic registers was adopted in the first reading, which will accelerate public services and make it easier for Ukrainians to communicate with state bodies. It will allow them to solve any question in one, maximum two visits to a state administrative center, instead of running from one office to another multiple times.
However, even if the law is adopted in its second reading, it will come into force no earlier than Jan. 1, 2022.
In addition, some changes that are crucial for the economy were already made to existing laws. One of them creates an “electronic office” for construction companies, which will minimize corruption risks.
“It will save billions of hryvnias,” Fedorov said.
The next laws that Fedorov needs the parliament to adopt are the Law on Electronic Registers in a second reading, the Law on Using Personal Data, or the so-called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Law on E-residency, which will allow foreign citizens to use government services, register companies and do business in Ukraine.
Plus, starting in 2020, public servants will find it easier to file their online declarations of assets and income, because the declarations system will be interconnected with property registers.
President’s support
As much as Fedorov wants to accelerate the process of the country’s digitalization, there is still a room for growth, especially in mid-level management.
“There isn’t enough expertise in general, but the core people that we work with are really great experts,” he said.
For him, the ministry is like a startup, where people who used to work in IT businesses are trying to change the poor reality in which Ukrainians were forced to live for many years.
“It’s not depressing to work for the state at all. I like it,” said Fedorov.
While he understands that digitalizing the country completely will take years, Fedorov is sure that it will happen because there is a strong political will to do it.
“Every time Volodymyr Zelensky or Andriy Bohdan (the head of the president’s administration) call me, their first question is: ‘Where is The State in a Smartphone?’” said Fedorov. “They all help me.”
