Ukraine is Becoming a Leader in the Fight Against Corruption when Providing Services

NOTE TO READERS: I am not the author of this piece, and I am publishing this here at the request of the author.

By Vincent Foulk, JD

Faced with an invasion that threatens to destroy your entire nation, much of your populace unrooted, a bloated bureaucracy that is being disrupted, and a populace angered and sick of corruption, what do you do? Pull out your smartphone, bring in a young nonpartisan innovator, and find a way to bypass the bureaucracies to connect the people directly with the services. Governments, particularly in former soviet nations, depend upon government monopoly of services and regulation. As the veil of the soviet system dissolved, in its place were institutions accustomed to wide discretion and near unchallenged secrecy.

The famed anti-corruption practitioner Robert Klitgaard created the widely used formula for fighting corruption, “Corruption = a monopoly + discretion — transparency.” With a public outraged at the corruption and then the invasions increasing the need for services by a disrupted population and a stressed and entrenched bureaucracy, Ukraine sought to reduce discretion and increase transparency sharply. Turning in 2019 to Mykhailo Fedorov, the then 29-year-old Minister of the Ministry of Digital Transformation, he focused on the smartphone to go around the local decision-makers and track every application and provision of services. Launched in 2020, the program using the acronym Diia is considered a leader in e-government innovation, providing 130 government services in every Ukrainian’s hands. The program is still growing, with additional services being added.

Diia was built in partnership with the USAID. To make the program possible, Fedorov has partnered with Elon Musk to employ the Starlink system. This allows for services even in Russian-occupied territory. The concept is that Diia would cut the bureaucracy associated with public services, fighting corruption and decreasing government costs. Fewer people need to be employed in the public sector, and fewer human-to-human interactions result. Since the start of the program, 10% of government employees have been reduced.

So innovative is the program that part of USAID’s commitment to collaborating with Ukraine is to bring its digital successes to other partner countries seeking to accelerate their digital transformation. USAID is proposing plans to provide at least $650,000 to help jumpstart the adoption of Diia-like systems and digital technology services to other nations. Among the farthest along in this process is Estonia, which has worked with Ukraine on the transfer of code, user experience design, and user interface design and has recently announced the formal adoption of a Diia-like application for Estonian citizens.

Vincent Foulk is a criminal trial lawyer, former Colonel in the US Army, and US State Department Anti-Corruption practitioner. Colonel Foulk acted as the Senior Advisor to Iraq’s Commission of Integrity and later as the Senior Advisor to Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry’s Inspector General for the Department of Defense. Mr. Foulk was also a Senior Advisor for anti-corruption for the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. Mr. Foulk is currently a Senior Associate for Anti-Corruption Operations for the Nebula Group USA.