European expert believes that it is real to introduce a state in a smartphone in Ukraine
To introduce a unique ID for each citizen and forgo documents. To set up a transparent electronic business register and in a few minutes safely create and change business management without the participation of notaries or other intermediaries?
To know that you are located anywhere in the country and you have a uniform approach to addresses, based on a common database. All this is possible in Ukraine if European experts are facilitated by officials. How to put a 42 million country into a smartphone, and what exactly prevents legislators and executors from doing it – these are topics spoken about by Dovydas Vitkauskas, European expert, EU Pravo-Justice team leader to Novoye Vremya.
Why is it so important to form uniform electronic registers in Ukraine? How will we all benefit from them?
During the election campaign, Volodymyr Zelensky spoke about the state functioning in a cell phone. And these declarative statements can translate into reality. To make it work, on the one hand, it is only necessary to create a few additional registers. On the other hand, it is necessary to rebuild the whole system of executive power, to review the functions of the state as a whole and how the state provides services to the people.
This will provide everyone with accessible and reliable data. Today in Ukraine most facts are proved via documents and papers. It takes a lot of time and effort. In an advanced society of today, officials establish the facts and resolve the issues themselves, taking the necessary information from the registers electronically without making the person chase after the papers. Register data can be used in court, in cooperating with any public and private establishments. Everyone can get data online, instantly. Such innovations will simplify people's lives and significantly complicate the possibility of fraudulent schemes on the part of the state.
How to put Ukraine in a smartphone? What does it take and what steps have already been taken?
The first register you need to create is an address register. Addresses are key indicators of property, business, social and political human rights. To create an address register, it is necessary to set a level playing field – how addresses are created, where they are, how many of them are there, and how they should be changed.
There are dozens of address registers in Ukraine, starting with the voter lists in the Central Election Commission and ending with the land cadastre and property register, the archives of local authorities. The data at the same address in these all registers may not coincide, or even be fictitious. Because of this, the address can be misused (adjusting voter lists, or by dishonest developers, selling one apartment twice), and, most importantly, no fully electronic services based on a uniform address base can be created yet.
It is noteworthy that while there is a high level of political debate in Kyiv as to setting up an address register, at the local level, such as in Kharkiv, such a register is already being created. The secret is that local authorities need such an address register for their daily services. The clarity and predictability of address data is required, and with all these related services at the local level, this is why Kharkiv local authorities, not waiting for political decisions in Kyiv, are already creating such a register.
The innovations will simplify the lives of people and significantly complicate the possibility of fraudulent schemes by the state.
The next key register is the uniform register of residents. It is an electronic accounting system of every citizen. Upon registration, he receives a unique ID number when he is issued a new ID card or passport. According to this number, a computer can find a person in the digital space error-free: it was impossible to concretize it before because the computer does not understand the names and surnames – they are often the same. By having a unique number, a person can safely connect to state or private electronic services through, for example, a mobile signature from a telephone operator or through a bank website – and can use that mobile signature when registering any service, from selling real estate or corporate rights, to creating utility services and electronic payments.
Currently, only about 25% of the total population of Ukraine is on the population register. This register is created by the Migration Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. The process could be accelerated by better policy, but it is still happening, though slow.
Moreover, it is necessary to consolidate the cadastre (land register) and real estate register, which are artificially divided into two different databases. And there are other registers that are important too. For example, registers of movable property of various types, vehicles. They may also contain information about the owner.
What does Ukraine look like at the background of EU countries?
Ukraine may not be at the forefront or a leader, but it is no longer the most backward country in Europe. In Germany, for example, fewer electronic signature certificates were issued last year than in Ukraine. On the other hand, there are countries such as Lithuania or Estonia, where almost every person receives various services daily through a mobile signature and resolves many issues with the state without even seeing the officials.
In these European countries, the state is already functioning in a cell phone according to the principles your President spoke about during the election campaign. In Lithuania, the history of the creating such electronic services began as early as the mid-1990s, so Ukraine should do so not through declarative decisions, but through comprehensive and serious political decisions. For example, it is necessary to start with the law on Registers, which finally in Ukraine for the first time explained how the Registers and their data differ from all other databases.
The most effective approach to reform is to have a comparative view. If something works in a country that achieves more results for people, you should apply this example in another country. European countries often set common standards through EU rules – for example, regulating trusted e-services, where there are specific requirements for all countries. But even in the absence of such standards, EU countries are trying to learn from one another and adopt best practices.
Our task as experts is to bring to Ukraine both those standards that exist and those modern approaches of comparative practices that are desirable in order to achieve more effective results.
Your Project has been operating in the country for two years. Tell me, what is hindering Ukraine from quickly changing and creating a state online? Why the same achievements were not achieved, like in Lithuania?
There are several important differences between Lithuania and Ukraine. First, Lithuania's geopolitical development course was understood as back as 30 years ago. And this course has always been maintained and not denied, despite normal internal political struggles. And Ukraine was often a ship without a steersman, without a captain, or a ship that, when changing its captain, made a U-turn and sometimes waited which way the wind blows. This has never been the case in Lithuania and most of the new EU countries. The party system in Lithuania has also existed for almost 30 years. In Ukraine, it still does not exist: a new party is created for almost every election. This means that there are no common economic and social efforts, no common values that unite people and politicians. The most effective approach to reform is to have a comparative view. If something works in a country that achieves more results for people, you should apply this example in another country. Speaking of technical solutions, the key point in Lithuania was the creation of a single entity as back as in 1996, which provided all electronic services to the entire country. This entity is called the Lithuanian Register Center. Thus, all discussions, all the "tug of war" by various institutions and ministries were prevented. Over 24 years of its existence, an important approach has also been taken: the state and the ministries must regulate, and the Register must provide the service. This approach has led to the rapid implementation of both the address register and the electronic system of building permits, the automatic system of blocking bank accounts and the immediate recovery of debt, and many other technological innovations, which are now borrowed by many other countries.
The creation of all electronic registers must be interconnected. When we together with other donors tried to set up a working group on forming an address register at the level of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, it was unclear for most central institutions how one could perceive a uniform register not as their own property, but as a general project, since this area also concerns regulation of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Ecology, Construction Regulators and local authorities. The arbitrary and formalistic definition of the sphere of regulation by each ministry prevents making common decisions, it is necessary to sit at the table and ensure that the needs of society and technological capabilities dictate policy and law, not the other way around.
What must the new President and the Parliament first do to change this imperfect system?
The state in Ukraine still has many unusual and atypical functions for it. For example, in the ports of Odesa and Mykolayiv it is impossible to imagine elementary private port services without the approval of the Ministry of Justice and many other bureaucratic authorities. This is very strange for a market economy and a capitalist system.
In Ukraine, unlike Lithuania and other northern countries, deregulation as an approach has not yet been introduced. Much has been said about the various "de": decentralization and so on. But what needs to be less regulated and better regulated has never been fully discussed. More laws and instructions do not mean more law, but vice versa. We expect the new Parliament and other political forces to implement the principle of deregulation. Also, that fact that the state will privatize most of the property and state services will provide a better (and at a better price) service to society, it will create normal, autonomous from short-term political interests state-owned enterprises by the example of the Register Center in Lithuania. SOEs should not serve the inside political or vested interests of management; they should provide services to society on behalf of the state, but at the same time they should work effectively as business entities.