A year of digital transformation of the social sphere during a full-scale invasion

A year ago, I started working in Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine , as a CDTO, focusing on the implementation of the Unified Information System of the social sphere with the aim of digitizing social assistance and services in order to leave inefficiency, queues and paper certificates in the past, and make the state more convenient and customer-oriented for citizens.

I knew that there would be obstacles on this path, but there is no point in talking about them - the difficulty of ensuring progress during the war increased in all areas, but the indomitability and unity of Ukrainians did not allow the country to stop.

The evacuation of millions of people, communication interruptions, blackouts, cyberattacks - all this added new tasks and made work more difficult, but we continued to work, ensuring the continuity of social payments, responding to the challenges of war and the further digital transformation of the social sphere.

My colleagues and I have prepared a post on LB.ua there is more detail about the results, which I will simply list here:

• -Prepared a plan for the implementation of the first stage of the Unified Information System of the Social Sphere and the Development of Digital Services and formed a team
• Launched trial operation of the 6 most requested social benefits in the EIISSS in Zhytomyr and Rivne regions.
• We kept the systems running since February 24, kept the team and organized work in extremely difficult conditions to ensure stability in the calculation and payment of social benefits. For this, we should thank financiers, bankers and treasurers, who demonstrated courage and an incredible pace of joint work.
• A humanitarian account was opened at the National Bank of Ukraine to help Ukrainians affected by the war, for which more than UAH 780 million was received in 2022.
• On the basis of the SE "IOC of the Ministry of Social Policy" they centrally started calculating and paying social benefits instead of 103 district offices of social protection, which were temporarily occupied. During the year, over 7 billion hryvnias of aid, benefits and subsidies were allocated to these regions.
• We created the eDopomoga platform, on which we realized the opportunity to learn about how to get assistance for the accommodation of IDPs and submit applications for assistance from volunteers and international organizations.

The volunteer part of the eHelp platform provided the possibility of targeted additional support for Ukrainians - since the creation of the platform, benefactors have provided assistance worth more than 5.5 million hryvnias for food, medicine and fuel. More than 123,000 positions, which were specified in the applications, were closed. Thus, thanks to the efforts of almost 4,000 benefactors from 48 countries of the world, more than 11,000 families received support and the process continues.

• The government decided on payments for IDPs, and the team of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine ensured their registration in each community, and then, together with the Ministry of Digital Affairs, implemented the opportunity to obtain the status of IDPs and payments in Diia app, which was used by more than 1.4 million remotely, without risks and without queues persons
• After the first negotiations with humanitarian organizations, some of which did not have the necessary solutions for payments to vulnerable categories of the population, a third direction was added to the yeDopomoga platform - an application form for financial assistance from international organizations with further verification through the Unified Social Register.
• Citizens of Ukraine left more than 10 million applications, from which lists of more than 3 million people were transferred for payments at the request of organizations. Additional financial support in the amount of almost UAH 6 billion.
• Implemented the possibility to submit an application for an initial consultation on the adoption of a child on the Diia portal.
• Introduced in the UISSS the possibility to create certificates for crossing the border for persons with disabilities faster and more conveniently in the border regions.

• Thanks to the Pension Fund of Ukraine, we realized the possibility of obtaining a pension certificate in the Diia application.
• We strengthened the technical capacity of the SE “ICC of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine” and ensured uninterrupted work during future blackouts with Kulczyk Foundation and Derek Elder

• Implemented the possibility of submitting an application for the status of a candidate for adopter on the Diia portal.
• Social security administrations in all regions of Ukraine were connected to the UISSS, which ensured the centralized appointment, calculation and payment of housing assistance to internally displaced persons, as well as accelerated the resolution of problematic situations of displaced persons and eliminated the possibility of manual data entry and related delays, errors and corruption . In 2022, more than 52 billion hryvnias of aid from the state budget of Ukraine were paid to internally displaced persons.
• This system replaces the old systems from the 90s, which were already twice planned to be replaced with modern ones in the last two decades, but both attempts failed.
• Document sharing from the Diia application became available for the first time to people in social security offices when applying for assistance for internally displaced persons and certificates for crossing the border for people with disabilities.
• On the initiative of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine , services for changing the address of registration and deregistration of IDPs were implemented online in the Diia application, which were used by more people in the first day than offline in a month.
• The State Social Education Platform http://socialacademy.gov.ua/ was launched, which will contribute to systematic training and improvement of professional qualifications.
• We continued the research and industrial exploitation of UISSS in the territory of Rivne and Zhytomyr regions for 6 grants, of which the first 4 will be made available on the Diya portal already this year
• We signed an agreement with the World Food Programme UN - in the absence of funding from the state budget, we will be able to continue implementing new social services for Ukrainians in 2023.

• Made a web-oriented and more accessible information and analytical system "Children", which stores, among other things, data on children left without parental care and orphans.
• The Register of providers and recipients of social services in Vinnytsia, Poltava, Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions was put into trial operation. After the implementation of this register throughout Ukraine, we also plan to implement a convenient service on the Diia portal for recipients of social services.
• The Pension Fund was given the authority to issue and pay subsidies in order to optimize the payment process and more transparently and efficiently administer them, implementing the necessary improvements to the IT systems.
• We created an information and search system that significantly improved the process of searching for IDPs at the district, regional and central levels, expanded its criteria and displayed the results with a summary and the possibility of downloading them for use in work.
• The functionality of the Centralized data bank on disability problems was refined - this improves the quality of decision-making in the field of providing persons with disabilities with technical and other means of rehabilitation and services.

These results became possible thanks to the vision and support of Oksana Zholnovich and Mykhailo Fedorov .

What was done in 2022 is also the work of colleagues from social protection agencies and digital teams of communities, regional military administrations and ministries and agencies.

Special thanks to international organizations who play an important role in supporting digital transformation, including UNDP Ukraine in Ukraine with the support of the Government of Sweden, the World Food Program of the United Nations, UNICEF Ukraine , TAPAS Project , Committee for Open Democracy , The World Bank , European Commission and friends of Ukraine Andreas Keßler , Marcin Figlus , Jean Cullen , Derek Elder , Arvydas Siaudvytis , Dr. Iris Weigel .