Mstislav Banik
Exactly a year has passed since the start of a full-scale invasion Russia to Ukraine. Work on new services began immediately – on February 25. We knew for sure that time was short, and the tasks that needed to be solved were increasing every hour. Read more in the exclusive blog for the Channel 24 website.
At such a moment, powers, functions, responsibilities fade into the background – everything becomes as simple as possible: do everything that can be useful to people or the state .
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, we had many challenges, often not related to e-services at all. I am proud that our team, led by Mikhail Fedorov, managed to instantly adapt and realize that Dia can be useful far beyond online government services.
What am I talking about, actually? In addition to the obvious tasks for the operation of the product, which were implemented later (for example, services for IDPs or scheduled driving services), we faced general questions with an asterisk. For example:
- how to quickly secure the purchase of military equipment for the Armed Forces of Ukraine;
- how not to lose initiative in delivering news to people when the Russians hit the TV towers, seize regional TV channels and interrupt radio broadcasts;
- what should people do without physical documents and not authorized in Die before the registries are turned off, when the whole country is at checkpoints.
That is, people faced challenges – evacuation to other safe regions, travel abroad and the like, before the state – how to help the army and make life easier for people.
We solved these problems.
How Diya changed during the war
As of February 24, there were 14,632,503 users in Diya. We understood that this is a universal platform for communication between the state and people at such a difficult and decisive moment for the fate of the country. Yes, it is possible that Diya had fewer users than, for example, Privatbank or New Almost, but only Diya could become a super flexible solution during a full-scale war. And she became.
All this would not have been possible without the effective management of Fedorov, Alexei Vyskub, other deputy ministers and the selfless work of the Mintsifra team. Just recently, I understood for myself the meaning of the word “service” in the phrase “public service”. Your work is not only the performance of the functions of the state in peacetime, but especially the maximum efficiency in time of war, that is why you are here.
So, when, at the end of February 2022, we still began to crystallize problems, turn them into solutions, decompose solutions into tasks and fulfill them. But tens or hundreds of times faster. Since the beginning of the invasion, we have been constantly working non-stop. The load is much greater, because there is a great responsibility to people. But everyone in the team understands why he is here, and is ready to sacrifice weekends and rest for a joint mission.
How Diya has changed during the full-scale war/Photo by the Ministry of Digital Development
What we launched in the first weeks
еDocument
Because of the war, many Ukrainians had to evacuate to safer regions of Ukraine. Someone no longer had documents, because they were destroyed along with their houses, someone lost, someone forgot. For additional security reasons, state registries were turned off, so only 14.6 million people had documents in Diya – who had Diya before February 24. We had to solve the problem of a significantly larger number of Ukrainians.
We have found a solution. On March 11, a document was created based on authorization data, without connecting to registries and available for creation and verification without the Internet.
To be honest, from a design point of view, this is not a very good document. But it fulfills its function – to be bright, so as not to be confused. Subsequently, among the people, it generally turned into a “yellow passport” and for many became the default electronic document in wartime.
A special document was created in Diya for Ukrainians/Photo by the Ministry of Digital Development
TV & Radio
Already in the first days of a full-scale war, the Russians began to attack TV towers and jam communications. I think everyone remembers the missile attack on the Kyiv TV tower near Dorohozhychi, the airstrike on the Kharkov TV tower, the attacks on the towers in Korosten and Lisichansk. Russian hackers hacked into radio stations and launched fakes about the president, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, capitulation.
It was necessary to give people access to true news when TV or radio could no longer be a 100% source of information. Diya was a platform with 14 million users, so we could do it. This is how television and radio appeared in Diya.
Already on March 6, together with the MEGOGO media service, we launched Diya.TV. Ukrainians who had at least some access to the Internet got the opportunity to watch the national telethon and not fall under Russian propaganda.
Already on March 13, Diya.Radio was launched for those who have a weak Internet. Implemented this together with the National Public Broadcasting Company.
Helping the Armed Forces
Any purchase is a clumsy business. The country needed an effective quick tool for targeted provision of units with the equipment and equipment they need. One of the largest players in this market was and is the “Come Back Alive” fund, which has been operating since 2014, which has all the necessary processes built and has the necessary contacts.
Donations out through the application are rather an exception in this area. Usually this is on sites, but inside the apk there is only internal currencies or the purchase of subscriptions, but not donations. So we seem to be the first in the world to implement this. More than 318 million hryvnias were raised through Diya on “Come Back Alive”.
Subsequently, the United24 fundraising platform, created on the initiative of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, was launched. We finally became the first in the world to collect money for government accounts through a government application.
By the way, 111 million have been collected on United24 through Diya, and 107 million have already been collected on the Army of Drones within the same platform. That is, by simple calculations, we see that we created a service that was able to collect 536 million hryvnias.This war for Ukrainians is patriotic. In the first days and weeks, everyone, as best he could, tried to inform about the enemy troops. So, for sure, there was a social demand. Initially, a “stop russian war” chatbot from the SBU appeared. It had certain drawbacks in the form of a lack of protection against spam.
In parallel, we worked on our own bot, taking into account the experience of colleagues. This is how the chatbot “evrag” appeared. Since he is on the first screen in Dia, there is no need to remember how his address is written and look for him. Verifying identity through Dia without personal data prevents Russians from spamming and stealing the attention of the defense forces.
For the whole world, this experience has become civil intelligence – civil intelligence that combines the role of the population, basic digital tools and tasks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.People in the temporarily occupied territories, in the territories with active hostilities have lost the opportunity to do business or work, that is, they have actually lost their sources of livelihood. The state should solve such problems as efficiently as possible. So, already on March 8 in Diya there was an opportunity to apply for 6,500 hryvnias of state aid under the Support program. Even at that time, there were automatic checks and an application form without fields.
Later, by the way, entrepreneurs who employed IDPs were able to issue the same amount of compensation through Diya. As part of the program, 4,752,911 people received 6,500 hryvnias from the state. They were paid 30,893,921,500 hryvnias.
There are many new functions in Diya/Photo by the Ministry of Digital Development
Notice of damaged property
Military facilities for the occupiers were and are residential buildings, schools, kindergartens. Some houses were damaged, many lost their houses altogether. In a human-centric state, no one leaves citizens alone with their problems, especially during a full-scale war.
The vision of how to fix and how to restore was formed even then – in the spring of 2022. Now I return to this thought and think how strong it is – the state at the very beginning, during such events, is already planning assistance and restoration.
Therefore, it was important to create a tool through which homeowners could submit information about damaged or destroyed houses, so that there was a connection with these people. And now we are as close as possible to compensation.
We launched all these services in just the first weeks of a full-scale invasion. For us, starting a war was not about fear or panic, but about responsibility and, frankly, adrenaline. We worked almost around the clock.
The work is not over yet
Of course, we did not stop at the above products and continued to work on the most necessary services during war. Then there were services for migrants, for those who lost their jobs, grants and much more – a total of 49 services and functions per year.
Diya has changed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion and will never be the same as before. Now this is a sure basis for the state in a smartphone, because the state is much more than documents and services. And Dia is more than an app, it's already a Super App.
