Infopulse: Enhancing E-democracy in Ukraine
Infopulse, a leading Eastern European provider of IT and BPO services and a part of EVRY group, takes an active part in the project aimed at creating efficient e-democracy practices in Ukraine.
Our specialists volunteer in development of web-platform Enarod.org, which enables independent online interaction between different stakeholders in a democratic process.
100 Volunteers at Infopulse
About 100 professionals working at Infopulse are willing to help the project in their free time. For now, about 20 volunteers, whose skills and knowledge fit the project’s needs, are involved in the development of web-platform Enarod.org, which will allow:
- signing direct public agreement between politicians and citizens;
- creating e-petitions;
- providing secure and transparent online voting and assessment of political processes;
- strong authentication of voters with digital signature.
“The project is intended to improve functioning democracy and transparency within Ukraine. Enarod.org has the ambition to become the voice of civil society which can’t be ignored by policymakers around the country. Ukraine has chosen European way of development and we are glad to support our country on this way,”
- says Alexey Sigov, Infopulse President.
Reducing the distance between citizens and politicians
The project was initiated by Center for Innovations Development at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy on 15 March 2014, and has received support from many public organizations, IT-communities and politicians. Development of electronic democracy legal instruments is also in compliance with the EU recommendations for its members and other countries. Sergiy Loboyko, Head of Center for Innovations Development at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy gives more insight into this initiative.
Educational Institution in Democratic Avant-Garde
Kyiv Mohyla Academy is completely involved in this initiative. The idea of the innovation was born within the University’s walls and accumulated the knowledge, skills and enthusiasm of people from all humanitarian and IT faculties of the University. Kyiv Mohyla Academy has always been in the forefront of recent democratic revolutions, and is now taking active part in system revolution.
We came up with the idea of the project during the hardest days of Maidan, at first on 11 December 2013, and later on 19-21 January 2014. It was finally formed during the communication with the leaders of the Euromaidan Civic Sector and Reanimation Package of Reforms. Ultimately, the project was launched with a brain storming activity organized by the Center for Innovations Development and Alumni of Kyiv Mohyla Academy on 15 March 2014.
E-Road to Strong Civil Society
The success of the project depends on nearly equal contributions from our team and from the leaders of civil society. We believe that Ukraine has chances to achieve even more than Western Democracies, because E-Democracy development is initiated and coerced by the active civil community (Maidan) and not by the Government as it is usually done in the West. However, the present Ukrainian Government is open to such innovation.
Enarod.org has a chance to become a platform for the development of E-Democracy, implementation of ideas, projects and services by different activists. Now active Ukrainians will be armed with laptops and smart phones. Governmental institutions of different levels will become absolutely transparent and controlled by the society.
In the center of attention
The project has already raised high attention both in Ukraine and abroad, as well as has attracted a great number of partners (see Enarod.org), which is a great starting point for I-Eco development. More than 100 Ukrainian opinion leaders took part in the round-table-talk dedicated to this issue. All these leaders held encouraging speeches about the project.
Microsoft “Hackathon”. In April, in the conference hall of Microsoft Ukraine in Kiev, the project team was honored to present their concept at the hackathon, a programming marathon aimed to create socially useful web-projects.
UKRINFORM. The e-Democracy team also organized the press-conference devoted to the development of e-Democracy in Ukraine at UKRINFORM, the only national news agency of Ukraine. The platform enarod.org, developed by the team, was presented to the wide audience and earned a lot of positive feedback. The functionality for signing legal agreements between politicians and voters with the help of digital signature was called the ambitious innovation that is able to increase the influence of civil society on the political situation in Ukraine.
Ideas worth spreading. Serhiy Loboyko also held the speech about a new level of democracy – electronic democracy at TEDxNAUKMA:
“E-democracy is not just a global trend, it’s a symbol of a successful country of the future, which revolutionizes all traditional business processes that take place in Ukraine nowadays”.
The informative article about e-democracy project has also been published by Les Échos, the leading daily financial newspaper in Fran
Source: Infopulse
