Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, Trade Representative Taras Kachka notes that the digitalization of public services in Ukraine is happening easily, primarily due to the openness of Ukrainian society to it.
Answering a question from the moderator on why the digitalization of public services in Ukraine has been so successful during the panel "Public Administration Reform: A Key Driver of EU Accession" at the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC 2026) in Gdansk, Poland, on Friday, Kachka said that he believed a good foundation had been found for this.
He explained that, firstly, digitalization was the best way to prevent corruption when everything was transparent, and that it served as a driver for achieving this ambitious goal. Secondly, he noted that Ukrainians were a fairly young society with no prejudices regarding the use of digital tools, whereas in EU member states there were much more fears expressed as to whether digitalization was safe or not. He stated that Ukrainians treated this more openly and that he thought this success was based on the positive response of society.
The Deputy Prime Minister also called the results of the public administration reform in Ukraine good.
Regarding digitalization, he noted that while they wanted to do more, the results they had already achieved, which formed a foundation, had helped them survive at the beginning of the war and allowed them to continue surviving. He added that they still saw success even in the least attractive digital products of the state. He pointed out that the civil service was fully decentralized, allowing people to communicate with the authorities in a digital format, and that they were currently ensuring more interaction between different systems. According to Kachka, it was necessary to clear the space in order to give people working in the civil service the opportunity to implement policies, rather than focus on things that required digitalization.
He named another achievement: the way the government and the state communicate with society and the public, how they provide administrative services, and how this system works through central government bodies and local administrative service centers, pointing out that these centers across the country were a great success. He indicated that while they had ideas on how to improve their work, the centers were already working and people were using them.
Speaking about the challenges, he noted that they knew exactly where the trouble spots were, where there was a shortage of personnel, and where there was a lack of skills, adding that funds were also needed to attract people who could otherwise work elsewhere.
Kachka stated that there were people in Ukraine who worked for the government and the state as consultants, supporting public institutions somewhat from the outside. Consequently, he called on independent experts to get ready to transfer to government positions in ministries, emphasizing that this was unavoidable. He remarked that while one could joke about it, truth be told, there were thousands of people helping ministries develop strategies, but these individuals were also needed for daily meticulous work, which was highly necessary upon accession to the EU. In conclusion, he expressed his conviction that, despite the large volume of work that still needed to be done, they would eventually join the European Union.
