As we prepare for September 3 for the official launch of our new publication Civic Tech Market Report 2025, we’re excited to share an exclusive sneak peek of one of its in-depth interviews. In this interview, Oleg Polovynko, key figure behind Kyiv Digital, discusses the evolution of this digitization initiative. From its origins in smart city concepts to its pivotal role during the war, Oleg sheds light on how digital solutions are shaping citizen engagement and crisis management in Kyiv. For those eager to learn more, the complete interview will be featured in the upcoming release.
Could you give us a brief overview of what Kyiv Digital is and what is your mission?
Our program of digitization started in 2018, already in the war time which started in 2014 rather than 2022 as people often confuse. At that time, our government had voted for the digitization program; it was more about the Smart City agenda, of which Kyiv Digital is a part of.
It was initially meant to be about traffic and household management, and providing vital city services to the citizens. We were thinking about a mobile concept first and launched a digital app in January 2021. At that point, there were two main functions. The first one was the transport functionality, including e-ticketing that we provided in all public transportation and metro stations. The second function was focused on personalised announcements, for which each person could register in the app to receive direct notifications concerning their housing, or public transportation journeys. It’s linked to their household. Those were the main functions before the full-scale war.
We eventually launched a three-click parking as well, making it easier to manage without long bureaucratic issues. With our tool you can now pay for parking and just show the QR code to get your car from the impound lot. This functionality was the part of those launched before the full scale war. We had a little over a million users on our app, and were slowly adding new functionalities. At the time, the Participatory Budgeting was also launched, the first e-democracy service in which people voted for projects in 10 different areas of social life. Citizens chose the best solutions and projects in each category by voting for them and the winning project received a grant from the city.
Do I understand it’s right that Kyiv Digital is only for Kyiv citizens, or is it applied even in some other Ukrainian cities?
Indeed, we are focusing on services for Kyiv citizens. We are also doing a lot of activities to transform our Kyiv digital app into a more customisable platform, and make it easier to launch it in any new city.
So how has the platform changed since the full scale invasion?
February 24th 2022 was the day we woke up from air raid sirens and missiles hitting our cities. The app was then receiving notifications from our civil defence informing users of these missile attacks. We used to push these notifications manually, but we quickly understood that the process needed to be automated, which is the reason behind the integration with our civil defence office in order to inform citizens of missile attacks.
At the same time, we were getting a huge number of requests to share information on the location of evacuation points, and on how to evacuate the citizens . Kyiv’s population was about 3.5 million citizens, but reached the lowest point in March 2022 with 800,000 residents, meaning almost 2.2 million people had evacuated out of the city in just a couple of weeks. That was a terrible situation. But at the same time, refugees were coming to Kyiv from the eastern parts. So all this created new challenges for the city’s leadership.
Humanitarian centres were set up to help those coming to the city. All these challenges made us build new functionalities for our users, while at the same time, Google and other IT platforms stopped providing access to such features as changing maps and opening hours display for private companies. We therefore worked on providing an app with new map-based functions, including for instance the visualisation of shelters or points with first aid. Since some households had no electricity, these maps also showed where devices could be charged and which gas stations could be used to refuel. These were the main functionalities we provided, with the civil defence functionality on top of the usual personal notifications.
This is just a glimpse of the in-depth conversation we had with Oleg Polovynko. To read the full interview, be sure to check out the Civic Tech Market Report 2025. Join us at the online launch event on September 3, 2024 to celebrate the release with the authors and experts. To attend the event, please, register here. If you have any questions, please contact us at info@participationfactory.com.