Kyiv, 17 August 2022 – The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, in coordination with the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, is launching a system that will prevent the duplication of direct financial support, thereby conserving more resources for those in need.

This programme, supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and with funding from the Government of Sweden, will enable humanitarian organizations and government institutions to check whether potential recipients of multi-purpose monetary assistance are already getting support from other organizations. As a result, humanitarian organizations will be able to avoid the duplication of their efforts.

Oksana Zholnovych, Ukraine’s Minister of Social Policy, said it was extremely important for the state to protect its people in times of war. “We seek to change the philosophy of social support so that payments are targeted to those people who need them,” she said. “The presented digital solution serves precisely this purpose and will help us improve the mechanism for assigning and allocating aid from humanitarian organizations.”

Tobias Thyberg, Ambassador of Sweden to Ukraine, said that Sweden is a long-standing partner of Ukraine that provides substantial humanitarian support to the government for the Ukrainian people in these challenging times. “Many people impacted by the war are in an extremely difficult situation – they often have no roof over their heads and no means of ensuring their livelihood,” he said. “This platform will bolster aid effectiveness to provide humanitarian support to even more people who need it.”

Manal Fouani, acting UNDP Resident Representative in Ukraine, said that supporting Ukrainians, in particular those from the most vulnerable groups, has always been one of UNDP’s key priorities. “This digital solution aims to support precisely these categories of people,” she said.

“The government is making a considerable effort to reach out to as many Ukrainians as possible and to provide them with the support they need during the war and economic downturn,” said Manal Fouani. “The development of this deduplication subsystem is one such example where the joint efforts of Government, international partners and donors working together can strengthen support to vulnerable groups in Ukraine.”

Background

The subsystem was developed as part of The Digital, Inclusive, Accessible: Support to Digitalisation of Public Services in Ukraine Project (DIA Support Project), which UNDP in Ukraine is implementing with financial support from Sweden. The project, which was launched in 2021, aims to bridge the digital divide between generations and various social groups. Its main goal is to increase the accessibility of new digital solutions so that every man and woman in Ukraine can use electronic services, and no one is left behind.

The solution was developed using OpenG2P free software, which is integrated into the Diia infrastructure. Before processing personal data, the system runs a tokenization procedure on that data, meaning that to check for duplicates it will compare data hash codes, rather than the data itself. It does not store the personal data.

Only authorized users can use the platform, including international organizations that have been granted access with the approval of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, and which have signed the relevant memorandum. Users will be able to upload data about recipients of multi-purpose monetary assistance (without saving their personal data) so that subsequent deduplication checks include all recipients. The next stage will be to set up automatic information exchanges with other systems.

Media inquiries

Yuliia Samus, Communications Team Leader, UNDP in Ukraine, yuliia.samus@undp.org