Section 1. Monitoring of the implementation of recommendations on reform priorities for 2020–May 2021
1. Development and adoption of the National Strategy the Digital State 2025 and related regulatory acts, which should be consistent with the priorities of the European Commission Digital Strategy. The foundational document will identify approaches, tools and visions for the development of the digital state, improvement of relevant procedures and processes as a whole.
Not done
As of June 2021, neither the national strategy "Digital State 2025" nor related regulations have been adopted. There are some steps towards the development of regulations, but they are in the early stages.
In particular, as reported by the press office of the Ministry of Finance on February 2, 2021, the Ministry identified strategic steps and formed 16 package proposals for the development of the digital economy in Ukraine (a total of 61 digital projects) and is working to systematize all digital projects of the Ministry within a single monitoring system. However, the documents themselves are not publicly available, so they are not officially approved.
2. To ratify the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime in full. Introduce changes to cybersecurity legislation in line with the recommendations of the NIS Directive and new European Union regulations. Introduce a system of high-quality and rapid response to cyber threats and other vulnerabilities of online systems, meet the requirements for accession to the digital space of the European Union.
Not done
The Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime has not been ratified by the Parliament. Instead, the Law of Ukraine On Basic Principles of Cyber Security of Ukraine (№ 2163-VIII dated 05.10.2017) continues to operate from May 9, 2018.
3. To improve the quality and implementation of automated security control of the new IT solutions (web platforms, websites, specialized software, mobile applications).
Not done
No significant steps have been identified to implement automated security monitoring of the created public IT solutions.
4. To ensure publicity in the activities of the MDT (in particular, monitoring the reform process, priorities and next steps), form and ensure the effective operation of the public council (according to the standards of Resolution № 996). Develop on its basis expert groups around all areas of the Ministry's activities and related projects.
Done
Public communications of the Ministry of Digital Transformation take place regularly and through various communication channels, including the Ministry's website, social media pages, speeches of the Ministry's employees at local, national and international events, etc.
On February 19, 2021, the Ministry published an interim Goal Performance Report on the reforms for the previous year, as well as an action plan for the next year. In September 2020, the Ministry approved the composition of the public council, which included 35 people.
Meetings of the public council are held regularly, as reported by the Ministry’s reports on its website. Since its launch in September 2020, the public council has met nine times, as evidenced by the minutes of the meetings, published in free access on the website of the Ministry of Digital Transformation.
5. To adopt laws on the development of e-participation, in particular: "On the all-Ukrainian referendum", "On the local referendum", "On the public budget"; "On public consultations", "On interest philanthropy", "On the people's law-making initiative", "On electronic petitions"; "On recall of people's deputies", "On smart cities and territories", "On the All-Ukrainian public budget", new editions of the Laws of Ukraine "On local self-government", "On citizens' appeals", "On electronic voting".
Partially done
In January 2021, the Parliament of Ukraine approved The Law "On Democracy through an All-Ukrainian Referendum", which, among other things, provides for the possibility of expressing one's will through electronic voting. The draft Law on Local Referendum was not approved, but only registered in the Parliament in May 2021. The relevant law "On the public budget" was not approved at the national level. Instead, public budgets are implemented by local authorities through the Regulations on the Public Budget in each city and the allocate the funds for its implementation in the local budget.
The draft Law on Public Consultations № 4254 is currently being considered by the Parliament. It was approved in the first reading on March 5, 2021. The Law on Interest Philanthropy was not passed.
Draft Law on Amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine (regarding the support of non-profit organizations), which deals with interest philanthropy, was withdrawn from consideration in the Parliament in 2018. The Draft Law on Amendments to Article 93 of the Constitution of Ukraine (concerning the legislative initiative of the people) № 1015, submitted by the President of Ukraine, is being under consideration in the Parliament since 2019. The use of electronic petitions as a form of direct public participation is regulated by the Law of Ukraine "On Citizens' Appeals" with relevant amendments on electronic petitions from 2015.
A separate sectoral law on electronic petitions has not been adopted. Last edition of the law "On the status of the MPs of local councils" was prepared in July 2020 and concerned changes that allow to terminate the functions of a MP of a village, settlement, city, district in the city, district or regional council on the people's initiative. This recall can be initiated by both voters and the local branch of the party from which the MP is elected. The draft law "On Smart Cities and Territories" was not registered in the Parliament.
Instead, in April 2021, the Parliament adopted in the first reading the Draft Law on Stimulating the Development of the Digital Economy in Ukraine. Draft Law on Amendments to the Budget Code of Ukraine on the Establishment of the All-Ukrainian Public Budget was revoked in August 2019. According to the budget code, from 2019 State Fund for Regional Development receives UAH 500 million annually for the implementation of projects of citizens at the regional (non-national) level. However, the situation is currently uncertain, as the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine № 299 mentions the projects of the All-Ukrainian public budget participation in the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers № 196 removed altogether.
However, participation budgets / public budgets are implemented by individual local governments on their own initiative through the Regulations on the public budget and the allocation of funds for its implementation in the local budget. There are about 400 such local self-government bodies. At the regional level, the public budget sustainably functions only in one region. The positive point is the introduction of the participation budget as a local government tool of all territorial communities - in accordance with the National Economic Strategy until 2030.
6. To conduct the audit on the implementation of government concepts and action plans for the development of e-democracy and update them. Benchmark of success - growth of Ukraine's indicators according to the UN eGov-rating (2020 - 49th place in e-participation; growth by 29 positions in the previous year), data from the Statistics Service and independent estimates, such as the Local e-Democracy Index.
Partially done
According to the available data, it is difficult to reliably assess the degree of success of the implementation of government concepts and action plans for the development of e-democracy. For example, according to the data of the United Nations e-Government Survey 2020, Ukraine ranked 46th in the world according to the E-Participation Index.
However, this in itself does not indicate any success or defeat of e-participation in Ukraine: a change in the ranking depends on changes in the values of the index of other countries. That is, to compare the data of the UN e-participation index between different years is not entirely correct, because: 1) the methodology of its calculation changes every time; 2) the values of the index are based on expert assessments, which may change from year to year purely due to the fact that they were provided by another team of specialists; 3) to compare the data of the index for different years is not recommended by the authors of the survey.
Data Of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine on the use of e-democracy tools by public authorities and local governments in 2019, is available only in the aggregated form at the level of the country as a whole, and does not contain levels of e-participation in terms of the number of users of e-tools and the share of these users in the population.
Index of local e-democracy of the Center for Innovation Development has three editions: 2018, 2019 and 2020. However, each edition covered a different number of cities, different sets of indicators and relied on a different method of calculating the aggregate index with different values of weights. Due to these methodological differences, it is not correct to compare the positions of cities in the rankings of local e-democracy indices. It is possible to compare elementary indicators between years, but they are not available for all e-democracy tools and not for all settlements, so their totality does not reflect the state or dynamics of e-democracy in Ukraine as a whole.
7. To publicly develop a roadmap (action plan) for the development of e-democracy and a plan for the implementation of the project "Vzaemodiia" (“Interaction”).
Done
In order to develop a coordinated action plan for the authorities, civil society and other stakeholders aimed at ensuring the development of e-democracy tools, at least two public events were held with the broad involvement of experts.
Thus, on February 18, 2021, the Digital Transformation Committee held a hearing on the topic: "Electronic democracy in Ukraine - a road map for the goal - Ukraine in the TOP-20". However, the results of these hearings were not made public, so it is difficult to assess their results. Subsequently, on March 26, 2021, online public discussion "Priorities of the Ministry of Digital Transformation for 2021-2022: what do citizens expect?" was held online. A total of 101 people took part in the discussion. The results of the discussion were systematized by the organizers and sent to the participants of the event. Moreover, the top 10 proposals for the Ministry of Digital Transformation were predented in the form of infographics and published on the website of the RPR Coalition.
According to the transitional report on the results of Ukraine for 2018-2020, published by the Independent Reporting Mechanism, the Government conducted a public opinion poll and discussed with civil society the needs and requirements of an online platform for interaction between executive authorities and civil society institutions (called “Vzaemodiia”, which should be integrated with the state e-portal services "Diia").
8. To conduct an audit of the implementation of government concepts and action plans for the development of e-government and update them. Improve the implementation of the principle of "digital by default". Benchmark of success - growth of Ukraine's indicators according to the UN eGov-rating (2020 - 69 positions in e-government; growth by 13 positions), data from the Statistics Service and independent assessments, such as the Urban Transparency Rating, etc.
Partially done
According to the data of United Nations e-Government Survey 2020, Ukraine ranked 69th in the world according to the E-Government Development Index, with a value of 0.71 (from a maximum of 1), which reflects the "high" level of e-government. However, the structure of the values of this index for Ukraine reflects a rather uneven development of its components: the index of online services is 0.68 (out of a maximum of 1), the index of telecommunications infrastructure - 0.59 (out of a maximum of 1), the index of human capital - 0.86 (from the maximum possible 1). According to these data, the degree of development of telecommunications infrastructure and e-services lags behind the level of human capital development.
Regarding the change in Ukraine's position in the ranking among other countries over the years, as noted above, such a comparison is problematic for methodological reasons. Data from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine does not contain valid and detailed data for assessing the development of e-government in the country. According to Transparency of Cities 2020 rating conducted by Transparency International Ukraine, the average accountability of 50 evaluated city councils was 54.4 points out of 100 possible. Thus, the level of transparency of local governments is mediocre. At the same time, it is problematic to consider the Urban Transparency Rating as a benchmark for the success of the analysis of government concepts and e-government action plans, as local governments have a significant degree of autonomy in exercising their powers, while government concepts are more binding on central and local executive bodies.
9. To legislatively define the principle of "default data openness" and establish the obligation of administrators to disclose all public information in the form of open data. Strengthen accountability for violations of open data legislation. Update and control the implementation of Resolution № 835, promote best practices. Develop and publicly discuss data standards to be published. Establish quality control of published data. The benchmark of policy success is the achievement of the goal of the MDT - Ukraine in the top three according to open data, in particular according to the Global Open Data Index
Partially done
In 2020 and 2021, a number of updates of the Resolutions of the Cabinet of Ministers № 835 "On approval of the Regulations on data sets to be published in the form of open data" took place. In particular, until June 14, 2020, all those interested parties had the opportunity to submit proposals on the text of the resolution on the website, which ensured publicity of the review and wide involvement of stakeholders. AIn 2021, the Open Data Competence Center - Diia.Open Data was launched. It aims to increase the level of knowledge about open data, its impact and benefits for everyone and help Ukraine become one of the most transparent countries in the world.
At the national level, an analysis of the impact of open data in different sectors was conducted. On the international level, according to the Global Open Data Index 2016/2017, Ukraine ranked 31st out of 94 countries, receiving 48% of the maximum possible score and was rated as open by 20%.According to the Ministry of Digital Transformation, this is higher than the European Union average, but in 2019 the ministry declared a strategic goal to get into the top three, so this goal has not been achieved. In this case, according to the Open Data Barometer 2017, Ukraine ranked 44th out of 115 countries (next to Estonia). According to international rankings, Ukraine still has significant growth zones in the disclosure of public data.
In 2020, Ukraine took part in the European Open Data Maturity Report for the first time and immediately took 17th place, entering the list of fast-trackers. Therefore, according to international rankings, Ukraine is making significant progress in disclosing public data, but has significant potential for growth.
10. To develop and amend the Law of Ukraine "On Personal Data Protection" in order to introduce an effective system of personal data protection, transparent policy of publishing open data, development of open data taking into account the rules of the digital space of the European Union and GDPR standards.
Partially done
Law of Ukraine "On Personal Data Protection" was updated twice: by law № 524-IX of 04.03.2020 and by law № 1357-IX of 30.03.2021. However, these changes were insignificant.
Threats
Legislation in the field of personal data protection in Ukraine is not as effective as in the EU. In Ukraine, the issue of personal data protection is regulated by the Law of Ukraine "On Personal Data Protection", which entered into force in 2011. To ensure its provisions, in 2012 the State Service of Ukraine for Personal Data Protection was established.
However, two years later it was abolished and the responsibility for personal data protection was transferred to the Ombudsman and the courts. Furing 10 years when this legislation had been in force too few personal data cases have been initiated, and even less was decided in favor of the user. In addition, companies are not yet serious about this legislation, as fines for violating it range from 100 to 500 euros, while in the EU defendants pay from 2 thousand to several million euros for violation of the use of personal data of users.
11. To introduce the principle of "Cloud first" through the adoption and implementation of the Law of Ukraine "On Cloud Services".
Not done
On June 16, 2020, the Parliament adopted the basis of the draft Law of Ukraine on cloud services. The bill is still being prepared for the second reading.
12. To develop and approve a new version of the National Informatization Program (NIP), which defines the main approaches to common standards for creating and implementing digital tools to ensure interoperability and consistency of digital development at the state and local levels, open architecture of IT solutions, stages of digital infrastructure development, “points contact” between national and local projects (for example, the register of the territorial community, etc.).
Not done
By order of May 7, 2020 The Ministry of Digital Transformation approved a new Methodology for determining the affiliation of budget programs to the field of informatization. However, these changes are insignificant.
As for the practical results of the NIP implementation, in 2020 1,578 informatization projects were submitted to the Ministry of Digital Information for approval, in 2019 - 2755 projects. Of these, 2,589 were agreed in 2019 and 1,340 in 2020. At the same time, their legitimacy to be extended to local self-government bodies is highly questionable. Regarding the practical results of the implementation of the National Informatization Program, in 2020 1,578 informatization projects were submitted to the Ministry of Education for approval, in 2019 - 2,755. Of these, 2,589 were approved in 2019 and 1,340 in 2020.
As part of the implementation of the National Informatization Program, the Ministry of Digital Transformation digitized 8 documents in the mobile application Action: 1) digital ID-passport of a citizen (launched: April 2020); 2) digital passport for travel abroad (launched: April 2020); 3) digital driver's license (launched: February 2020); 4) digital vehicle registration certificate (launched: February 2020) and compulsory car insurance policy (launched: May 2020); 5) 5) digital student ticket (launched: April 2020); 6) digital tax number (launched: September 2020); 7) digital certificate of registration of an internally displaced person (launched: October 2020); 8) digital birth certificate (launched: October 2020).
According to expert data, On January 16, 2020, the national electronic interaction system "Trembita" was put into commercial operation; by the end of 2020, 70 public authorities and organizations had joined the system, 36 state electronic information resources were registered, transactions with 28 registers were exchanged, 136 electronic interactions were built, and more than 70 million data were exchanged. What's more, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution at a meeting on June 23, which allows businessmen to use the state data exchange system "Trembita". According to the Minister of Digital Transformation, thanks to this innovation, business will be able to exchange data with government resources, receive information about beneficiaries when selling bus tickets, train, create utility bills, etc.
13. To ensure the quality and interoperability of state registers by adopting and implementing the Law of Ukraine "On Public Electronic Registers".
Not done
After adoption in the first reading Of the Draft Law of Ukraine "On Public Electronic Registers" on October 31, 2019, the only progress was to provide a table of amendments on July 15, 2020. Since then, the bill is still awaiting a second reading.
14. To develop the Diia project, continue the digitization of services: 150 services should be available online by the end of 2020, 100% of all services should be available online by the end of 2024 (according to the action plan of the MDT).
Partially done
According to transitional report on the results of Ukraine for 2018-2020 (published by the Independent Reporting Mechanism), as of November 2020, a total of more than 120 digital services were available on various web resources, and as of April 2021, 50 e-services were available on the "Diia" portal, while the portal itself had more than 4.5 million users.
15. To continue to implement CDTO positions at the ministry level, as well as at the regional/local levels; to expand the local (in particular, at the level of all communities, districts) network of digital MDT ambassadors. Ensure transparency of the system of their plans/results of activities.
Partially done
As of April 2021, all ministries have their own CDTOs. At the city level, CDTOs already exist in Khmelnytskyi, Dnipro, and Kharkiv. At the regional level, deputies for digital transformation are appointed to Kherson region and Poltava region.
16. To create a National Register of electronic solutions (licensed software), which is purchased at the expense of the budget, their developers, and experts involved. Introduce the principle To introduce the principle "The state pays for the software once": the software purchased with budget funds is open for use by all authorities. Take into account the best practices of the European Union and the United States.
Not done
The National Register of electronic solutions for licensed software, purchased from the budget, and its developers has not been established.
17. To disseminate training resources, advice and digital tools to develop the capacity of governments at all levels, including public service delivery and management efficiency through the transition to DDDM (Data-driven decision-making). Create specialized training and retraining programs for digital transformation (CDTO), increase digital literacy of the population, public associations, businesses.
Partially done
On March 3, 2021 the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the Concept for the Development of Digital Competences and approved an action plan for its implementation. Moreover, according to the Ministry of Digital Transformation: in a year without state funding, more than 50 educational series on digital literacy were created, which were watched by almost 500,000 Ukrainians; the first national test for digital literacy "Digits" was launched; a network of 2,000 offline digital education hubs throughout Ukraine was built, and another 4,000 hubs would be added to the network.
According to the Ministry of Digital Transformation, it: synchronizes the basic concepts and requirements within digital competencies with European standards; modernizes public administration processes; reduces the digital divide and harmonizes the national digital market with the European Union; accelerates the implementation of e-democracy and e-government instruments.
18. To encourage and expertly support the adoption of regional and sectoral informatization programs (city/community, region, CEB) with mandatory public consultations with citizens. Implement smart solutions that affect the interests of citizens and the community, which are subject to public consultations.
Partially done
A number of regions of Ukraine have already adopted a regional informatization strategy. It includs: Odessa region, Poltava region, Chernihiv region, and Kharkiv region. In all other areas, strategies will soon appear with support of the Ministry of Digital Transformation.
19. To use the potential of artificial intelligence to improve the process of providing public services. Benchmark of success - growth of indicators of Ukraine according to the Government Artificial Intelligence Readiness Index (2019 - 63 position).
Partially done
In June 2020, public discussion of the draft order of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine "On approval of the Concept of development of artificial intelligence in Ukraine" was held. As a result, on December 2, 2020, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the Concept of Artificial Intelligence Development in Ukraine.
20. To digitalize regions, cities / communities - stimulate their transition to data-driven governance by providing access to state data, their synchronization. Stimulate digitalization at the local level through the introduction of co-financing from the state budget in a certain proportion to the amount of funding for local informatization programs. Standardize business processes and data structure that are a consequence of the implementation of the business process in order to create products for local self-government, with the possibility of further scaling.
Partially done
In 2020, Ukraine participated in the European ranking of open data Open Data Maturity Report, and took 17th place for the first time, entering the list of fast-growing countries (Fast-trackers). Since 2020, Diia Open Data Portal with more than 1000 sets of open data in free access, including open data provided by local self-government bodies (for example, on participation budgets/public budgets) has been launched.
21. Transfer state-owned data to communities and regions, which will ensure that the latter make decisions based on them and verify state-owned data.
Partially done
Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services (TAPAS) A "Typical Local Open Data Portal Solution" was developed to systematize work with administrators at the regional level and facilitate citizens' access to open data of the Ministry of Education and Science within the USAID / UK aid project and the Eurasia Foundation. Minitstry of Digital Transformation provides free access to the cities that want to develop open data to the open data portal. The first city to receive a non-exclusive license to use the software to run its own open data portal, became the city of Mariupol, whose data sets are available on data.gov.ua.
As of February 2021, more than ten cities in Ukraine have deployed their own open data portals. The functionality of most allows automatic data harvesting to data.gov.ua. The rest are working on technical compatibility with The Unified state web portal of open data.
22. To develop and implement a new system of data formation of registers, statistics through the implementation of the principle "data in registers from the original source".
Partially done
As of today, 38580 data sets, including financial statements of companies, are available on the Unified State Register of Open Data. The state of data of the Unified State Register of Open Data has not fundamentally changed, 38,580 data sets are available. During its modernization in 2020, some previously published datasets became unavailable. Systemic failures have occurred more than once, and local communities were not involved in its filling on practice. There is a lot of criticism of the development of open data by the expert community. At the same time, an important innovation in 2021 was the appearance of financial statements of companies, but only for the year 2020.
During 2020, the Unified State Web Portal of Open Data was visited by more 1.1 million users. Moreover, the statistics module, which demonstrates the dynamics of the creation of new datasets, the total number and frequency of updates of new datasets, the largest groups and the most popular datasets, was launched on data.gov.ua. At the same time, there are no qualitative changes in the involvement to the formation and verification of data from state registers, the primary source of which are the territorial communities. There is still no open data of the current national address register, demographic register, data on land plots, geodata, register of powers and normative legal acts of territorial communities, which are formed with the participation of territorial communities. No changes have taken place in the formation of qualitative digital data of state statistics.
23. To support CivicTech and GovTech initiatives related to the creation of data-based services, create their register, co-finance the cost of data centers for cloud solutions that are in demand.
Partially done
In December 2020, the Ministry of Digital Transformation launched 360 Tech Ecosystem Overview - a portal where information on the entire IT ecosystem is collected. In particular, it applies to universities, startup accelerators, techno hubs and all the technology industries.
However, the portal is not the only register of CivicTech and GovTech initiatives. International organizations and projects remain the main actors in supporting Civic Tech initiatives in Ukraine.
For example, in 2020-2021, thanks to the partnership between the Ministry of Digital Transformation, the Ministry of Regional Development and the EGAP Program, a number of digital tools were launched to improve the interaction between local authorities and citizens. The largest of them is the only platform for local e-democracy, that unites all local e-petitions, public budget, and e-public consultations in 250 communities in Ukraine and already has over 1.3 million users. And thanks to the cooperation with the USAID/UK aid project and the Eurasia Foundation Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services (TAPAS), a number of public registers, open data sets and public services have been analyzed, digitized and improved. In addition, the chatbot “SVOYI” already works in 21 communities in 9 regions of Ukraine.
Moreover, in October 2020, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and Microsoft Ukraine signed a memorandum on cooperation (Azure Expansion Program) for the development of cloud infrastructure worth more than $ 500 million.
Section 2. The current major challenges in implementing the reform (at the time of monitoring)
According to the data of United Nations e-Government Survey 2020, the index of telecommunication infrastructure of Ukraine is 0.59 of the maximum 1, i.e. developed only on a moderate level.
According to the study of the Ministry of Culture in 2019, although 88.4% of the population of Ukraine over the age of 18 have access to the Internet at home, 53% have below-average digital skills, and 15.1% have no such skills at all, According to a 2021 UNDP study, 53% of Ukraine's adult population has used e-services in the last year, with more e-services being used by men than women; people with higher education than without higher education; those who work or study than retirees; inhabitants of cities rather than villages; with a medium or high level of affluence than with a low one. It is indicative of insufficient digital literacy and significant digital inequality.
As reported by the Cabinet, in 2020 there was an unprecedented disclosure of personal data of citizens of Ukraine, which were contained in the databases of public authorities, banking and commercial institutions, but were placed for sale in a private Telegram channel. This indicates a lack of protection of personal data of citizens.
Due to the lack of modern smartphones, Internet access and skills to use e-services of certain categories of some citizens, the introduction of mandatory and non-alternative use of certain applications (for example, "Diia Vdoma") violated the digital rights of citizens, and the inability to obtain some public services offline (such as e-service for registration and registration of unemployment benefits caused by a coronavirus pandemic on the portal "Diia") - rights in a broader sense.
The monopolization of the provision of public e-services by government agencies (for example, the availability of some e-services only on portal "Diia") is also problematic, because such centralization threatens the observance of digital rights of citizens, restricts competition, calls into question the maximum quality of their provision and the optimal price of their creation.
As the data of the public opinion poll conducted in 2020 shows, among Ukrainians over 18 years, only 62% knows about the possibility to file a complaint to local authorities on infrastructure issues through the website, only 57% - about the possibility to initiate and sign an e-petition to central and local authorities self-government, and only 54% - about the possibility of openly report corruption in the media, including blogs and social networks. That is, the level of awareness of the population of Ukraine about e-participation tools remains mediocre.
According to The Center for Local e-Democracy of the Center for Innovation Development 2020, among residents over 18 years libing in regional centers and selected cities of Ukraine, the highest rate of use of basic tools of e-democracy is only 24.7%. This indicates a still low level of use of e-participation opportunities of the country's population.
New Law of Ukraine on Amendments to Public Procurement (bill № 5309) threatens the effectiveness of the public e-procurement portal Prozorro and contains a number of corruption risks. According to estimates of Transparency International Ukraine, the bill obliges businesses to provide evidence of violations of their rights and interests when appealing against procurement to the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine. As such evidence is not always possible to provide (especially when the substance of the complaint concerns the tender documents), such a rule may deprive the business of the right to appeal and allow the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine to arbitrarily select complaints for consideration. Moreover, this law removes from the Law "On Public Procurement" construction of a large ring road around Kyiv worth UAH 85 billion and allows to make purchases for the Independence Day of Ukraine (worth 5.4 billion UAH) under a negotiated procedure. This narrows the effects of existing digital solutions and thus increases corruption risks.
According to World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators, in 2019 the level of voice and accountability in Ukraine was at the level of 48.28 percentile (i.e. worse than in 51% of countries). Also, according to the data of Rating of accountability of cities in 2020, conducted by Transparency International Ukraine, the average accountability of 50 evaluated city councils was only 12.5 points out of 100 possible. That is, the level of accountability of central and local governments (including online accountability) remains quite low.
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Section 3. Recommendations on reform priorities for 2021-2022 (next annual period, until URC 2022)
Given that 21 of the 23 recommendations of 2020 are either not implemented or partially implemented, they remain relevant in the coming years. Among them, the top priority tasks are to:
Analyze the implementation of government concepts and action plans for the development of e-democracy and update them.
Create a National Register of electronic solutions (licensed software, which is purchased at the expense of the budget) and their developers, experts involved. Introduce the principle "the state pays for the software once": software purchased with budget funds should be open for use by all authorities.
To develop and adopt the National Strategy the Digital State 2025 and related regulatory acts, which should be consistent with the priorities of the European Commission Digital Strategy. The foundational document will identify approaches, tools and visions for the development of the digital state, improvement of relevant procedures and processes as a whole.
To develop the Diia project, continue the digitization of services: 150 services should be available online by the end of 2020, 100% of all services should be available online by the end of 2024 (according to the action plan of the MDT).
To legislate the principle of "default data openness" and establish the obligation of administrators to disclose all public information in the form of open data. Strengthen accountability for violations of open data legislation. Update and control the implementation of Resolution № 835, promote best practices.Develop and publicly discuss data standards to be published. Establish quality control of published data. The benchmark of policy success is the achievement of the goal of the MDT - Ukraine in the top three according to open data, in particular according to the Global Open Data Index, Open Data Maturity Report.
To develop and implement a new system of data formation of registers, statistics through the implementation of the principle "data in registers from the original source"
To develop and amend the Law of Ukraine "On Personal Data Protection" in order to introduce an effective system of personal data protection, transparent policy of publishing open data, development of open data taking into account the rules of the digital space of the European Union and GDPR standards.
In addition, given the challenges, it is reasonable to propose a number of new recommendations. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, central executive bodies, local authorities and local self-government bodies are recommended to:
In order to strengthen the infrastructure capacity and reduce the digital divide, to provide broadband Internet access to more settlements and to introduce 5G communication in the country.
In order to ensure the sustainable and secure operation of e-services - to develop and implement mechanisms for regular monitoring of the fight against cybercrime and statistical accounting of the effectiveness of relevant government agencies.
To increase the level of utilization – to conduct awareness campaigns on existing e-government and e-democracy tools at the national and local levels, including those developed within Open Government Partnership Initiatives in Ukraine.
In order to increase accountability - to ensure the provision of reasoned responses to citizens proposals, their fuller consideration, and the accountability of officials, in particular in the form of online dashboards and online trackers of citizens' inquiries and government responses, working in real time, such as in the project "Access to truth".
To strengthen direct e-democracy – to increase the scope of existing and introduce new digital tools that provide the power to approve decisions to citizens (such as e-elections and e-recall of public council representatives).
In order to receive proposals from the widest range of stakeholders - to reach consensus and maximize the development and approval of the regulations of strategic importance - to introduce tools to combine several types of democracy (such as participatory, deliberative, direct, digital, expert, liquid, random, representative), in particular, in format of the civil assembly.
In order to strengthen cybersecurity, simplification and automation of bureaucratic procedures and reduction of corruption risks - to transfer public registers (in particular, real estate) to blockchain technology, thanks to which digitized, tokenized property will allow users to manage their property rights directly in the blockchain register, without mediation of traditional bureaucratic institutions, or with their minimal participation.
To identify less obvious corruption risks - to strengthen the analytical capabilities of public open data monitoring tools with artificial intelligence-based algorithms, such as public procurement control portal Dozorro.
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