The E-Governance for Accountability and Participation Program (EGAP) is being implemented by East Europe Foundation and Innovabridge Foundation in partnership with the Ministry of Digital Transformation over 2015–2023.

This program is supported by the Swiss Confederation, with funding through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

EGAP’s aim is the development of electronic services and e-democracy at the national and regional levels. Target oblasts are Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, Odesa, Vinnytsia, and Volyn Oblasts.

The EGAP Program is engaged in a number of areas:

e-Services

The EGAP program is developing convenient, transparent public online services for both individuals and business. It also teaches Ukrainians how to use these new technologies.

As a result, Ukrainians are gaining accessible, quality services, government agencies are streamlining their processes and saving time, while for society as a whole the risks of corruption are being reduced and public administration is becoming more efficient and accountable.

Since its inception, the EGAP Program has established dozens of e-services, including eMalyako (eBaby), automatic FOP (sole entrepreneur) registration, domicile registration, applications for residential subsidies, assistance to FOPs and employees during quarantine, and registering for humanitarian aid.

e-Democracy

The key purpose of this component is strengthening communication between the government and its citizens, increasing transparency, and reducing corruption.

Services established as part of this component:

• The e-DEM national platform offers such popular tools as “Local petitions,” “Town Hall,” “Open City,” and “Public Budget.” More than 400 communities are already connected to the platform and eDEM recorded more than 1.6 million users by November 2021.
• The Diia.Digital Learning platform works to improve digital skills. The platform has educational series aimed at a variety of groups: handicapped individuals, government employees, teachers, and so on. The project’s purpose is to develop digital literacy in 6 million Ukrainians by 2024.
• The IDP Chat-bot helps internally displaced persons and those living in the occupied territories and on the line of contact to get answers to FAQs regarding pension benefits, housing, documents, crossing the border, and so on.
• The VzayemoDiia Platform is a digital space where people can freely communicate with government agencies and participate in online competitions for community organizations.

Digitalizing the regions

Fostering digitalization in the regions is one of the most important aims of the EGAP Program. We are working with 40 communities in five of Ukraine’s oblasts: Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, Odesa, Vinnytsia, and Volyn.

This kind of collaboration involves carrying out a digital audit and putting together a digitalization plan. We also provide local government agencies with numerous policy boilerplates that are intended to improve the quality of public administration, encourage social innovations, and reduce the digital gap at the oblast level.

Projects in this area include:

• The Diia.Digital Community Platform includes templates of successful projects, information about courses, and useful analytics for the community representatives responsible for digital transformation.
• The SVOYI Platform provides a municipal chat-bot for interactions between local governments and residents, and a community website builder. The latter helps communities set up user-friendly and easy-to-understand sites where residents can get information about public services, sign on to petitions, or vote for draft public budgets all in one place, through the SVOYI chat-bot.
• Mobile Briefcases are apps that allow TsNAP administrators to provide services on the go, making government services available to the elderly, the handicapped, and those who are hospitalized.
• IVR or Interactive Voice Response is a tool that allows individuals to simply and easily find information that they need regarding government services using a voice menu.

For more about the EGAP Program, visit https://egap.in.ua/