Why Ukraine is one of the world's most digital countries

Rounding a corner in Kyiv on 24 Feb 2022, Oleksandr Bornyakov remembers driving into a gun battle.

It was day one of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Russian saboteurs were fighting with Ukrainian security forces in the centre of the Ukrainian capital.

"There is shooting, cars are burning, armoured vehicles are burning... when we eventually passed... there were a lot of bodies."

As a government minister he had been ordered to drive hundreds of kilometres west and continue his work in a safer location.

Beginning in 2019, Bornykov, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, had been managing the shift of Ukraine's government services to a new app called Diia (the Ukrainian word for action).

The idea was that citizens could access everything they needed from their mobile phones; driving licences, marriage certificates, house deeds, and much more.

They started with driver's licences in 2019, which was quite popular, but the Diia app got a boost during the pandemic, when Covid certificates were added.

"This gave another maybe two or three million people," says Bornykov.

Despite the war Diia has continued to develop.

Today the app hosts 40 government services, including tax payment, car registration and marriage applications.

Perhaps more fun - Ukrainians can make local selections for Eurovision via the app, including selecting national jury members and choosing the national representative.

Additionally, 30 documents are available on the app; Bornykov, flicked through some of his for me including his gun licence and car insurance.

There is also a Diia portal, which can be accessed via a browser on a computer, which has 130 services for citizens and businesses.

In total Diia has 22.7 million users.

All this, according to Bornyakov, makes Ukraine one of the leading countries when it comes to digital government services - in his opinion putting Ukraine ahead of Estonia, which is well known for its digital government.

"I haven't seen anybody else doing better than us, except maybe Saudi Arabia, and this both relates to number of users and and the approach."

How has Ukraine been able to make such progress, despite the disruption of Covid and amid, for the last three years, fighting off Russian invaders?

Part of it is having the right workforce, according to Bornyakov.

He says that for the past 20 years Ukraine has been a popular destination for companies looking to outsource IT projects.

He estimates that there are 300,000 software developers in Ukraine, many of whom have worked on complex projects for big international companies.

"There's a lot of technical and experienced engineers that can do brilliant things," he says.

They are also not as expensive as elsewhere in the world. So, he estimates that between five and 10 million dollars was spent on developing Diia.

Hiring software developers in the UK would cost five or 10 times as much, he says.

David Eaves is associate professor of digital government at University College London, and has studied efforts by governments all over the world to digitise their services.

He says the key to Ukraine's success was work done prior to building the app. Using software similar to that used by Estonia, Ukraine created a data exchange, which made it easy for data flow from government departments and organisations.

The Diia app was then added on top of the data exchange.

"If you have this flexibility of moving data around, it becomes much easier to build new services, because rather than asking citizens for the same information all over again, you can simply request their permission to access it," says Prof Eaves.

So, when applying for a benefit, users don't have to re-enter their address, place of birth, martial status, and their income could be checked against their tax records.

Not only does this reduce the administrative burden, but it means the government doesn't have to design a system to recollect, store and process this information all over again.

That flexibility allowed Ukraine to add new services to cope with the challenges of war.

"We actually introduced around 15 different services related to the to the war," says Mr Bornyakov.

For example users could apply for compensation if their property was damaged or destroyed. Citizens could also report the location of Russian troops through the app.

Prof Eaves also points out that Ukraine's war with Russia has spurred government to modernise.

"When you are on a wartime footing, there's a sense of urgency. The urgency of delivering the service becomes more important than rules that sometimes trip up bureaucracies," he says.

That's put Ukraine among the countries leading the effort to digitise government services, according to Prof Eaves.

He thinks Denmark is probably leading the way with both a solid infrastructure, range of services and well designed user interface.

So what does the future hold? Ukraine is developing AI systems which Bornyakov says have the potential to make interactions with government smoother.

He sees AI guiding a user through the various steps to get what they want.

"We want to redefine the approach to government services," he says.

While Prof Eaves is excited about the possibility of AI in government services, he advises caution.

Developers need to be sure they have reliable data to train the AI and then ensure the system can learn what the right answers are.

"AI is like having a Ferrari. You can do amazing things, but you better have good roads. Pretty hard to drive a Ferrari on a dirt road, right?"