From Shared Practice to Shared Strength: The Global Government Technology Centre Kyiv

“Ukraine is hungry for innovation”. This phrase resurfaced at the GovTech Leaders conference in Vilnius, where we shared our vision on open innovation alongside Europe’s leading GovTech voices – and it captures Ukraine’s reality precisely. Over the past years, the country’s digital state has been tested under conditions far harsher than any EU member state will likely ever face. Yet, this adversity has produced lessons in resilience, collaboration, and trust with direct relevance for Europe’s digital-transformation challenge.

It was against this backdrop that the Global Government Technology Centre Kyiv (GGTC Kyiv) was established in late 2024 as part of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) Network, in partnership with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation and with support from Switzerland. Kyiv was chosen because Ukraine had already proven itself one of the world’s most dynamic GovTech innovators – a place where digital service delivery, even under attack, continued to advance.

To turn Ukraine’s experience into shared value, GGTC Kyiv serves as both an amplifier and absorber of innovation. Operating from the country’s administrative and digital backbone, the centre channels Ukraine’s GovTech achievements while actively importing and adapting global best practice. Its purpose is straightforward: to turn Ukraine’s pressure-tested insights into practical models for others, and to bring international methods back into Ukraine in return.

Together, these roles place GGTC Kyiv exactly at the intersection between what Ukraine has learned under pressure and what Europe now seeks to understand – weaving Ukraine’s experience of resilience into lessons that can strengthen Europe’s own democratic fabric. The clearest expression of this resilience is found in how Ukrainians continue to engage with their state, even when disruption becomes the norm.

GovTech Pulse, Ukraine’s first public opinion survey on digital public services, published in April 2025 by GGTC Kyiv, reinforces how deeply Ukrainians have come to rely on digital services, even under wartime pressure. In the past year, 55% of Ukrainians reported using digital public services, with remarkably high satisfaction levels: 75% for government services and 86% for digital business services. 

These figures matter because they show more than adoption – they show trust. In wartime, when institutional fragility is a constant risk, such broad-based approval signals that digital systems are perceived not merely as tools but as dependable anchors for citizens navigating uncertainty.

Digital literacy efforts also played a crucial role, according to the report published by GGTC Kyiv and Vox Ukraine in June 2025. Ukraine met its national goal of engaging 6 million people in digital-skills training, reducing the share of citizens with below-basic digital competencies to roughly 40%. This meant that when the war disrupted physical services, more citizens were already prepared to transition fully to digital channels.

This convergence of high satisfaction, trust, and digital readiness forms the foundation on which GGTC Kyiv builds its work – analysing not only what succeeded under pressure, but why it succeeded.

Ukraine’s digital transformation is often associated with its flagship platform, Diia [1]. Initially a mobile app, it has since evolved into a national digital infrastructure connecting citizens with more than 150 public services. 

Since the country faced unprecedented disruption, Diia has become the backbone of state continuity, safeguarding access to digital identification, emergency support, and relocation assistance. According to GovTech Pulse, 38% of Ukrainians now use digital services more often than before the invasion, driven largely by people aged 16-49. Crises did not slow digitalisation; they accelerated expectations for fast, remote, reliable public services – and GovTech met that demand.

This continuity was possible also because Ukraine entered the war with robust digital infrastructure. By late 2024, mobile-network coverage reached 97.6%, and nearly 89% of schools, hospitals, and social facilities were connected to high-speed internet, according to the Vox Ukraine–GGTC Kyiv report. Even under bombardment, redundancy and rapid restoration kept the digital backbone functional.

Yet, infrastructure alone does not explain Diia’s success. Several deeper lessons emerged:

• Build an ecosystem, not a single app: Diia’s evolution from basic documents to 150+ services shows that digital government succeeds when services connect across life events, not when they sit in isolation.
• Establish trust early through legal certainty: Ukraine made digital passports legally equal to physical ones – a simple but powerful step that unlocked mass adoption. Countries can do the same by giving digital documents formal legal status.
• Design around real life situations, not bureaucracy: Services like e-Baby, e-Entrepreneur, or Marriage Online reflect a shift from digitising forms to solving whole problems. This mindset creates value fast.
• Bring the private sector inside the ecosystem: Integrations with 25,000+ partners – banks, logistics firms, telecoms – made digital services usable everywhere. Public–private co-creation is essential for scale.
• Prioritise speed and flexibility in crisis: Wartime services like e-Support and e-Recovery were built in days or weeks. Governments can prepare similar fast-response pipelines for emergencies.
• Invest early in resilient infrastructure: Diia stayed online during missile strikes because connectivity, redundancies, and recovery systems were already in place. Resilience must be designed before a crisis.
• Adopt a service-first philosophy: Ukraine follows a simple rule: if a process can be automated, it should be. This principle reduces administrative burden and raises public satisfaction.
• Treat digital government as a social contract: Diia changed how citizens relate to the state – showing that convenience, transparency, and reliability strengthen democratic trust.
• Think internationally from day one: Ukraine now prepares to integrate Diia into the EU digital wallet ecosystem. GovTech ecosystems are stronger when built with interoperability in mind.

The economic effects of this shift have also been substantial. According to the Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, as of September 2025, the economic impact of Diia’s services exceeded 184 billion UAH (EUR 3.77 billion) – more than 100 times the platform’s development cost. One study by Civitta, an international consultancy, estimated that digitising basic services saved the state around 48 billion UAH (almost EUR 1 billion) annually. Full digitisation was projected to save nearly 75 billion UAH (EUR 1.5 billion) and increase Ukraine’s GDP by 5.3% by 2035.

And yet, the real impact cannot be captured in figures alone. Every digital service that stayed online meant a family accessing benefits despite displacement, a business continuing to operate during blackouts, or a citizen receiving support without needing to queue in a possibly damaged administrative building. Reliability became a form of reassurance at a time when little else was predictable.

For GGTC Kyiv, these lessons in digital transformation are not abstract. They constitute a living dataset of what it means to run a state under extreme pressure. The centre’s mission is to transform these frontline insights – from digital continuity to crisis-ready infrastructure – into methods that can support reforms across Europe.

GGTC Kyiv is, above all, a platform for action-driven cooperation – uniting the government, the private sector, tech companies, and the research community in one continuous exchange of knowledge and best practices. By anchoring this dialogue in Ukraine’s wartime-tested digital experience, the centre turns real pressures into shared insights and practical solutions. In this way, GGTC Kyiv transforms hard-earned lessons into tools that strengthen GovTech at home and offer clear, adaptable models for countries abroad.

To these aims, the centre blends three core functions – research, communications, and piloting innovation – ensuring that lessons are not only captured but implemented. We work closely with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, local ecosystem players and aggregators, the World Economic Forum, and partners across Europe. This creates a constant feedback loop connecting frontline reformers with global expertise.

The lessons forged under pressure only become meaningful when they begin to influence how institutions collaborate, learn, and deliver. 

GGTC Kyiv’s role is to enable that shift – by creating the platforms, partnerships, and knowledge flows that help translate hard-earned insights into practical approaches. The result is a growing body of shared learning that strengthens Ukraine’s own digital evolution and offers valuable direction to peers across Europe. 

Wartime GovTech succeeded not because of isolated breakthroughs, but because ministries, companies, and civil society aligned around shared problems. GGTC Kyiv builds on this DNA. It convenes government agencies, tech companies, startups, and international partners, creating spaces where challenges are openly defined and solutions are shaped together.

This approach especially comes to life through GovTech Lab Ukraine, the country’s first open innovation programme for the public sector and a flagship example of GGTC’s model in action. Informed by global best practices, the Lab launched its first iteration in just three months – shifting Ukraine toward co-creation and trust-driven innovation. The past six months demonstrated substantial demand and momentum:

• 20+ GovTech challenges submitted by government bodies
• 3 selected for the inaugural pilot
• 69 proposals to solve 3 challenges from Ukrainian and international innovators

These early results illustrate how quickly cooperation can scale when clear processes, shared incentives, and structured experimentation are in place – the very conditions GGTC works to institutionalise across Ukraine’s digital state.

Ukraine’s most powerful tools were not invented in isolation. Diia learned from Estonia’s experiences. GovTech Lab Ukraine drew lessons from CivTech in Scotland and GovTech Lab Lithuania. GGTC Kyiv embeds this principle in its methodology: when a proven model exists, the centre helps Ukraine learn from it, adapt it, and point it toward real policy needs.

This outward-looking approach is precisely what makes GGTC valuable for Ukraine and countries seeking reform. Through knowledge exchange on global knowledge platforms like GovTech Intelligence Hub, the centre channels the wealth of expertise to and from a plethora of partners, showing what genuine adaptation looks like through thoughtful translation. 

As of April 2025, many Ukrainians strongly supported technologies tied to safety and resilience – from drones (84%) to cybersecurity tools (77%), according to the GovTech Pulse report. GGTC Kyiv monitors and closely studies public confidence in GovTech through dedicated research studies. We are also the heart of Ukraine’s GovTech community as we regularly gather the community through events, networking and stakeholder consultations. 

The lessons forged under pressure only become meaningful when they are shared, discussed, and shaped into collective understanding. GGTC Kyiv’s role is to bring together government, the private sector, tech companies, and the research community so these insights can be exchanged openly and turned into informed decisions across Ukraine’s digital ecosystem.

This knowledge-sharing mission comes to life through tools like GovTech Ocean, GGTC’s first analytical platform that maps Ukraine’s entire GovTech landscape in one place. By giving policymakers, innovators, and international partners a clear view of active solutions, emerging trends, and areas for development, the platform helps ground cooperation in real evidence and real needs.

Together, these efforts ensure that Ukraine’s wartime lessons are not isolated successes, but shared insights that can guide Ukraine’s next steps and offer useful direction to peers across Europe.

Ukraine’s experience underscores a simple truth: digital resilience is national resilience. When services remain available during blackouts, displacement, or disruption, they preserve not only administration but also trust, continuity, and democratic stability.

The EU today faces its own pressures – from geopolitical uncertainty to rising citizen expectations. Ukraine’s GovTech journey offers a practical roadmap for how states can stay functional, trusted, and adaptive under stress.

GGTC Kyiv sits at the centre of this exchange. It distils Ukraine’s digital experience into practical methods, connects domestic actors with international partners, and acts as a conduit for two-way learning.

Our message is simple: resilience can be learned, trust can be built, and digital governance can hold a society steady when it needs it most. Through GGTC Kyiv, the resilience Ukraine forged under pressure becomes quiet strength for others – a way for nations to build the kind of steady, trusted governance that endures even when the world becomes uncertain.

Disclaimer: The Global Government Technology Center (GGTC) in Kyiv became the second GovTech centre in the world after Berlin and the 21st Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) in the World Economic Forum network. GGTC Kyiv is supported by Switzerland within EGAP Program, which is carried out by East Europe Foundation, and initiated by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the World Economic Forum. The views expressed in this op-ed do not reflect or channel the official position of the Ukraine’s Government on digital transformation. 

The views expressed in this op-ed reflect the author’s analysis and perspective alone and do not necessarily represent the official position of Ukraine’s government or its partners on digital transformation.

[1] An overview of Diia, along with its integrated AI agent, is presented in the Public Sector Tech Watch success story on Diia.AI, which received the 2025 Government-to-Citizen (G2C) Best Cases Award from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Digital Services (DIGIT) and the Joint Research Centre. Read it here: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/public-sector-tech-watch/diiaai-ukraines-national-ai-agent-government-services.

Please use the comment section below to share your insights and start an insightful discussion.