Paper pushers could face extinction in Ukraine very soon, thanks to a July 29 decree signed by President Volodymyr Zelensky to make all government services electronic and online.
The decree specifies 11 steps for the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to roll out such e-services for Ukrainians. It includes auditing all the country’s registers, making them work together, and putting up a single website for access to such services.
If ministers take all the steps decreed, the circulation of paper forms — when applying for documents and filing others, and receiving all kinds of permits — will instead take place online.
The move is intended to speed up and simplify e-services, save money from the state budget, and increase the transparency of government.
“Most of (the registers) are completely inefficient and non-transparent,” Zelensky’s digital advisor Mykhailo Fedorov said on June 30, commenting on the decree on the President’s website. “This is the main cause for raiding, corruption and other schemes in the providing of various state services, such as construction or land industry.”
“Transparent and reliable work of state registers will be the key to safe business development and effective management of the country as a whole,” Fedorov said.
The decree has some deadlines, too. The Cabinet of Ministers has just 3 months to conduct an audit of all 350 registers in Ukraine; it has 6 months to launch a single website for e-services and make Ukrainian citizens able to identify themselves on this website.
By the end of 2019, the President’s Office hopes to have at least three e-services for sure: obtaining a birth certificate, registration of a baby’s residence, as well as receiving a tax code when getting a passport at 16.
In 2020–2021, the Office wants to allow for the application of a driver’s license and the taking part in population census online. Electronic voting at elections is also a target for the next two years, according to the decree.
Apart from e-services, the website will also act as an all-in-one state register, including for land and property ownership, tax and income declarations.
Over the years, Ukraine has introduced various online platforms to ensure e-services in the country, but they are introduced in a fragmented manner and are mostly unknown with only iGov standing out, a platform voluntarily developed by Dmytro Dubilet, former IT director at country’s biggest bank PrivatBank, and handed over to the government in 2018.
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