BBC:
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.”
