Ukrainian digital ID app Diia continues to attract attention

In June, Ukraine became the first country to offer online marriage, allowing Roman Lozynskyi and his fiancée Svitlana Kisilova to tie the knot using the Diia digital identity app.

The marriage between MP Lozynsky and university lecturer Kisilova was confirmed by digital signatures on Diia, which allows Ukrainians to access documents such as ID cards, biometric passports and driving licenses. The application also provides individuals and businesses with access to public services, with its main goal being to make all public services available online.

Ukraine’s digital transformation through Diia is not only important for the more than 30,000 couples who have registered to marry online since the service launched. The world is paying close attention to Ukraine and how it is using its digital ID and digital public infrastructure (DPI) to boost its economy while defending itself against Russian invasion.

Benefits of digital infrastructure revealed in times of crisis

The threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty has exposed the critical role of e-government and digital infrastructure in boosting not only the country’s efficiency but also its resilience, writes the Brookings Institution. The Washington-based think tank examines the technology solutions that have contributed to the country’s digital success. These include Diia, Prozorro’s e-procurement service, and Trembita, an interoperable, decentralized government data exchange platform based on Estonia’s open-source ecosystem X-Road.

According to Brookings, Diia is the most important innovation introduced by the Ukrainian government. With the core elements of Trembita and Diia, Ukraine was able to quickly expand Diia to meet wartime needs, including launching services for internally displaced persons (IDPs), financial assistance, property damage registration and compensation, reporting the coordinates of Russian troops, purchasing war bonds, and more. The latest innovation introduced is digital veterans cards.

While digital transformation can take decades, the benefits to government operations and citizen resilience can be “extraordinary even in the most challenging times,” the report concludes. Brookings also highlights Ukraine’s collaboration with Estonia as an example of how leveraging open source solutions can accelerate digitalization.

Brookings estimated the economic and anti-corruption value of Diia at $455 million in 2021 and $1.34 billion in 2022. The app has become the starting point for a broader digital ecosystem of Diia-related apps. The country made Diaa open-source in March this year.

Making government records resilient

Ukraine is also an example of how digital public infrastructure can make government records resilient to crises such as war, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), another Washington think tank. The report highlights differences among DPI cases in countries in the Global South, including India, Brazil and Zambia.

To protect against both physical and cyberattacks, the Diia platform does not store data directly. Instead, it accesses information from decentralized databases using Trembita and the Vulyk automation system.

“With more than 100 distributed government registries and databases, Ukraine’s data storage system is less vulnerable to external attacks than centralized systems like India Stack,” CSIS notes.

Ukraine digitized almost all of its government records between 2016 and 2020, with Trembita being launched to provide secure data exchange between users and state databases, along with Vulyk, which stores digital records from about 600 administrative service centers. Trembita also paved the way for the launch of Diia in 2020 by standardizing data formatting and data sharing, according to the case study.

Educational portal

Digitalization is not only giving Ukraine an advantage on the battlefield, but also in the classroom. A report by British higher education website Wonghe examines Ukraine’s efforts to educate and retrain its population in order to boost its digital economy.

Part of this effort is Diia.Osvita, a digital educational portal offering distance learning as part of the Diia.Digital Education project. Last year, Ukraine also launched an app called Mriia for Ukrainian students, their parents and teachers. The app provides children with a digital ID, as well as information about educational programs, courses, films, extracurricular activities, competitions and clubs.

According to the Ukrainian government, the Diia portal has over 21.7 million users, and over 70 government services are available online. The Diia application includes 14 digital documents (ID card, foreign biometric passport, student ID, driver’s license, vehicle registration certificate, vehicle insurance policy, tax number, birth certificate, IDP certificate) and 21 services.

Article Topics

biometrics | digital government | digital id | digital public infrastructure | Diia | mobile app | Ukraine