Ukrainian Digital Innovations: Social Development in 2023

In the first half of 2023, digital processes became one of the key tools for effective administration of aid, accrual of social benefits and ensuring rapid response to the needs of citizens.

 Social protection of vulnerable segments of the population, the quantitative indicator of which is growing with each missile strike on civilian infrastructure, channelling of government aid to those affected by military operations, the rapid targeted provision of social services – all these necessary processes are becoming vital nowadays.    

 Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine has affected the life of every person. Despite this, our state continues to improve the system of social support which actually serves as a rear for every Ukrainian. To strengthen social support, the team of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine continues to develop a unified reliable foundation for digitalization of the social sphere.  When we talk about digitalization of the social sphere, we mean creating sustainable, centralized back-office infrastructure that provides rapid exchange of interagency data.

 The Unified Information System of the Social Sphere (abbreviated as #UISSS) has become the basis for the digital transformation of social support in Ukraine. Currently, it includes 40 registries and 16 subsystems. By developing this system, we are implementing provision of updated and convenient social services that become available in a few clicks on the Diia portal and in its app.

In particular, the UISSS helps overcome the challenges that Ukraine faces during the war. It radically changes the way of interaction between the state and its citizens. It is thanks to the UISSS that paperwork processes are transformed into effective digital user-friendly online services for citizens. 

The most pressing issue of our time remains assistance to internally displaced persons, who, as a result of the invasion of the russian federation, were forced to leave their homes.

 As of 24 July 2023, 4,904,116 people have been registered and paid UAH 43.8 billion of government aid since the beginning of 2023.

 Introduction and development of centralized assignment, accrual and payment of aid for IDPs in the UISSS allowed to provide:

•  convenient and fast receipt of the service, including thanks to automatic identity verification;
• storage of all personal data at the central level, which made it impossible to lose or use this data without authorization, in particular, at the local level in the event of military operations or occupation of the territory;
• paperless – creation and transfer of electronic files instead of paper ones, automatic recording of all data changes made by local social protection officers in the UISSS;
• easy transition to servicing from one Social Protection Agency to another in the event of a change in the place of actual stay of IDPs.

 Digitalization of this package of services is an uninterrupted process allowing us to implement a joint project of the Ministry of Social Policy and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov to help obtain IDPs social services online in Diia app or on its portal, without involving civil servants and the need to visit Social Protection Agencies every time they move to a new place, collect certificates and apply other bureaucratic services. Today, the #Diia portal or app makes it possible to:

 ●      have the IDP status issued and the payments assigned;

●      change the place of residence record if a person has moved to another location in Ukraine;

●      cancel the IDP status if a person has returned to his/her place of permanent residence.

  As of today, more than 1.5 million people have taken advantage of this service.

 Another effective and convenient element of digitalization is the introduction of document sharing in Diia in Social Protection Agencies instead of paper ones when applying for help for IDPs.

 Speaking of abandoned houses, we should also mention, to our regret, damaging the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant by the russian federation. The technical capability of the UISSS services allowed us to quickly implement monetary assistance to the victims of this disaster. It is remarkable that even the loss of the original passport or other identity documents is not an obstacle to receiving aid, because the social protection authorities use information about the person available in the Unified State Demographic Register and other state information resources.

Digitalization of social benefits in the UISSS, launched last year, had a positive impact on increasing the transparency of the payment system, in particular, the payment of six most demanded social benefits was introduced among the population in Rivne and Zhytomyr Oblasts, namely: benefits for children being under guardianship; for children having serious illnesses without disabilities; when adopting a child; for low-income families; for children living with single mothers; persons with lifelong disabilities and children with disabilities. The figures speak for themselves - 1,391,284 people have already received social benefits implemented through the UISSS which is 53% of all recipients of government social benefits in Ukraine.

Beta testing of a joint project with the Ministry of Digital Transformation – applying for four social benefits on the Diia portal – is still underway: when adopting a child, for children having serious illnesses, persons with lifelong disabilities, and for children living with single mothers. Currently, more than 600,000 people receive these social benefits, so their availability through Diia portal will greatly streamline this process.

 Also, a series of adoption-related services starting with online consulting have already been implemented via Diia portal. Consulting aims to help potential parents assess their readiness to adopt a child, gain insight into the details of the procedure, and choose the type of family upbringing. Citizens can also register there as adoption applicants. It takes 30 minutes to submit an application. Similar applications can be made for guardians or foster parents. More than 1,000 citizens have already taken advantage of these online services.

 Continuing the topic related to children, we should highlight another digital project of the Ministry of Social Policy – e-Recreation. This is about monetization of children's health improvement according to the "Money Follows the Child" principle, in which parents of children from low-income or large families, as well as parents of children with disabilities, are to receive targeted funds to purchase vouchers.

 This modern digital solution has replaced the former non-transparent distribution of vouchers. From now on, the government will directly pay parents funds for the recreation of children who need support, live in the area of active military operations or on the border with the russian federation, and parents, together with the child, will be able to independently choose any institution in the Carpathian region that meets the safety requirements and criteria for recreation, and improve the child's health in the period of time that will be convenient for them. Since the project's launch, 1,641 children have already received funds for recreation.

 Another positive step in digitalization is the start of functioning of Social Service Providers and Recipients Register as part of the UISSS, which brings together state and private providers on the same platform. For social service providers, the Register is the basis for a transparent market and effective competition. As for citizens, this provides an opportunity to find the required social services in their region online, using a dashboard.

 At the same time, the Ministry of Social Policy is working on creating electronic accounts of social service providers in the UISSS, which will provide a possibility to track information in real time.

 For certain categories of citizens, digitalization of the process of providing by Social Protection Agencies and Administrative Service Centres (ASC) of certificates for receiving benefits that are issued based on income, generated from the Register of Beneficiaries, has become important. The potential number of persons eligible for such a certificate is about three million people.

 The implementation of digital projects would be impossible without exchanges with other state registers and databases which allowed the Ministry of Social Policy to receive or verify the correctness of information about certain recipients of social support, and citizens do not have to waste time now collecting various certificates about themselves, their income, property, etc. 

 In the first half of 2023, the following exchanges with databases were implemented:

•  State Tax and Migration Services regarding automatic verification of individuals as IDPs;
• PrivatBank and Diia portal on automatic identification of families eligible for governement aid under the e-Recreation programme and sending them notification via Diia or the Privat24 mobile app;
• Ministry of Finance on conducting preventive and ongoing verifications for the correct accrual of social benefits, including housing subsidies;
• Ministry of Health on obtaining information about enterprises that provide technical and other means of rehabilitation of persons with disabilities and other persons in accordance with the law;
• The State Judicial Administration on obtaining information from court rulings that have become legally binding, on the current social status of social support recipients – recognition of a person as incapacitated, arrangement of guardianship or adoption of a child, recognition of a person as missing, etc.    

 There have been some new accomplishments, too. eDopomoga (e-Help) humanitarian platform thanks to which international organizations and private benefactors from any country in the world have the opportunity to provide direct financial and humanitarian aid to Ukrainians affected by the war, was still receiving even more awards.

PaySpace Magazine Global Awards 2022 in the Best FinTech Startup (ranked first) and TechFin-Project categories (ranked third), uafin.tech Rostyslav Dyuk Ukrainian Fintech Awards in the FinTech New Product of the Year category and FinAwards-2023 in the Reliable Digital Platform to Help Ukrainians category have been added to the International Trade Council GoGlobalAwards in 2022 in the Best Tech Innovation of the Year category, and Resilience Award from Mastercard .

 This comes as no surprise, since thanks to the eDopomoga platform, for example, 438,682 applications of persons with disabilities to receive payments have been forwarded to international charitable organizations. And this is just one example of the platform's effective performance.

 "Information and Computing Center of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine" SE “ICC of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine” Yurii Konovalov was for the first time included in the Catalogue of #Fintech Companies in Ukraine thanks to the development and upgrade of this key IT social sphere enterprise with a forty-year history.

In July, in collaboration with the United Nations World Food Programme Matthew Hollingworth Marianne Ward David Thomas and the United Nations Children's Fund murat sahin Paul von Kittlitz , we organized a Digital Social Forum where we presented the implementation of the strategy for digital transformation of the social sphere with the support of WFP, TAPAS, EGAP, East Europe Foundation (EEF) , UNICEF, and the World Bank Group .

This event brought together its participants around the concept of creating digital solutions to make Ukraine comfortable for raising children, starting families, for active longevity, economic independence, regardless of any circumstances and any restrictions on functioning.

I believe that building effective tools for interaction between the state and its citizens for the sake of the best possible availability of social support is not only a challenge, but also an honourable task, the implementation of which can make every person and organization involved in these changes really proud.

 The Ministry of Social Policy keeps on actively implementing the digital transformation of social support centred around a person. It is important for us that every Ukrainian in need gets online access to high-quality social services and benefits.

 We have ambitious goals – launching a new website of the Ministry of Social Policy, Remote Information System, Case Management System, new systems for resolving issues of people with disabilities, and a data bank on orphans.

We believe that these efforts will result in positive changes and provision of more favourable conditions for all citizens of Ukraine. This confidence of ours is supported by the expertise and support of international partners.

 We still continue working on the implementation of the Action Plan for 2023 approved by the Ukrainian Government to implement the strategy of digital transformation of the social sphere!