Human centered design digital transformation – User Needs First Across Borders

Oleg Polovynko: That pressure is starting three years ago in full-scale invasion and more than 10 years ago when Russia firstly attacked Ukraine. So we was on this way all the time transforming, but past three years was the catalyst which shows the weak point and the strong point. And in the theme of our podcast, it’s important to underline that the user-centric approaches which our city started implementing helps us to go through this period more united, more connected. And that what I want to share with audience and tell a little bit more what Ukraine and Kiev has now to propose to all worldwide that all these challenges what we are facing for the past five years, starting from COVID, not only the war, if you look at these problems in these issues from the point of view of the residents and the point of view of the city administration, they are quite similar to the cities who is fighting with the fire forests with the cities who is fighting around flooding or something similar. So it’s all connected and similar in the moment when you want to deliver the service, when you want to care about your residents and all that experience we are boosted for past three years. So the situation is, of course, is hard because people tired every night. we have missile attacks and but we still going forward, we still working, we are fighting again and I can you truly tell that now we are more stronger than in moment of full scale invasion.

Randy Semeleer: Wow. So you said it’s at the beginning of your answer that it shows the strong and the weak parts. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

Oleg Polovynko: Of course, if we talk about the strong part, that was this digital wave which was started from President Zelensky in the moment when he created, not even choose, firstly they created Ministry of Digitalization, and after that was chosen Mikhail Fedorov, this is our digital minister and he did great job in creating GovTech, the stack of solutions in Ukraine. These gives excellent pass for city authorities. For example, we solve the task of identification, national identification. Now it’s not a problem. We have super app on the government level. called DIA, where we have all digital documents, your passport, your driver’s license, tax number, birth certificate, education, diplomas, all of these documents now you have in a digital wallet and in shareable way. So for example, Kiev using integration with these registers easily. And for example, if we have parking task, we just, you can share in your app your driver license and without any problem you park your car. Or if it will be evacuated because you are mistakenly parked in wrong place, you will receive the notification because in registers we know who’s this car and you directly receive notification. You don’t even need to call anywhere. So these huge changes which started on the national level in 2022 when, for example, massive evacuation started in the cities. So from World War II that was the most massive migration of the people on the same territory happened. So more than 25% of Ukrainian was displaced in this period of time. So in that moment, a lot of them lost their documents. They lost their properties, and that was challengeable to restore it. But when you have it in digital way, it’s quite easily just to show them. So all these instruments helped us to deliver digital instruments, to deliver services in user-centric way.

Randy Semeleer: Okay, thanks for that. Richard, when you listen to Oleg talk about the situation and you think about digital transformation, are there any examples or parallels that come to mind that you can draw with other places perhaps? Richard Pope: I mean I think getting to the heart of what Alec was describing then is actually the digital capacity, digital design practices, it’s about resilience, it’s the capacity that governments So, all levels need to be able to respond to situations, be they war or climate change or what’s happening in the economy at the moment in early 2025. So, it’s about resilience, it’s about capability. So, just thinking to two examples. So, in the UK, the digital response to COVID was interesting for a whole bunch of reasons, but actually just the speed at which digital teams are able to deliver because the capacity was there and because digital infrastructure was there for sending notifications, so quickly building digital services. And also the way in which the public sector worked together in new ways. So I think it’s the other feature we’re seeing in what does it mean to be a digital government, digital state. It’s not just about digitizing one level of government, it’s about government work, parts of the public sector working together in new ways. So cities working with central government, working with civil society, working with the private sector in new ways and a much more networked organizational structure for government.

Randy Semeleer: Okay. Anything you want to add to that, Oleg?

Oleg Polovynko: I want to add that in the moment of crisis, when we talk about climate change, epidemia, conflicts, man or nature made disasters. In this moment, the local authorities, this is the last mile who really solve the problem of the residents. And that’s what I’m sharing and underlining that this connection between the residents and the local authority have to be first of all, trustable. Because in this moment, for example, in 2022, when full scale invasion started in first day, there was huge misinformation attack from the Russia. There was tanks in the center of the Kiev where they never been, and I hope never be in future. So, but in internet, we saw a lot of deep fake pictures, news that Russians already in the center of the Kiev. That was part of misinformation. And in this moment, they used some pictures created, they looks like the news channels. They distributed this information through the social media. And there was quite hard to check is it real or not. And people believed.

Randy Semeleer: Of course, yes.

Oleg Polovynko: So trust. In this moment, and any city have to solve, any residents have to solve. Okay, in my case, for example, we are in Amsterdam. We are under the water, yeah, right now. If something started, how you will know that this information is trustable? The second one, on the moment of the solving it, how you will communicate? That will be announcement on Sirena, who nobody knows what to do. or it will be some radio used, like Germany talks. For example, three years ago they have floating and they say, “We’ll be announced by the radio.” But the people sitting in Netflix, they don’t listen radio in this moment. What instructions you will deliver to the citizens? So these points, it’s really important in this moment. And that’s not about the war. This is about that situation, what can happen in every city in every moment. Yes. And trustable channel, personalized notification, all of these from any platform what you use in your daily life like Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, you already achieve. How you will achieve that from your city?

Randy Semeleer: As trust is a topic that will come up and has come up in other episodes also, of course the level of trust between a government and its citizens, but trust is a two-way street actually. Richard, when you think about the level of trust that is there between citizens and its government right now in a lot of places and hear Oleg talk about the importance of trustworthy information, what do you want to say on that?

Richard Pope: So I think when I hear people talk about trust in digital government services or trusting government in general, my question is always what type of trust because I think actually we need to start splitting that apart and thinking about things in slightly different ways. So I think there’s trust in the interaction. So am I really dealing with government here? That becomes more important as I said government becomes a bit more networked in how it delivers its services. So to give you a specific example from the UK, our health service has an app where you can see your prescriptions. And you can sign in and you can see what medicines you’ve been issued. You can also see that same information in high street commercial pharmacy apps. So that’s an example of trusted government information appearing in multiple places. Now how you govern something like that so that people are able to say for certain that It is the same information that it can be trusted, that’s been governed appropriately, being used appropriately. I think that’s critical. That’s one part of it. But I think that’s separate to relational trust that people have in government and with public sector employees, which local government is at the forefront of always. That’s a very different type of trust. So that’s not about is this piece of information true? you who you say you are, am I going to get the outcome that I’m entitled to. It’s about a trusted relationship. So if you think about something like social work or employment support or the police, so that’s about you get a trusted relationship there not just through the correct outcomes but a citizen seeing, knowing that they’ve been seen and understood and having that played back to them. get that as a part of a trusted relationship, trusted human relationship. And I think the reason for that discrimination, for splitting that into two, is that as we talk, I’ve discussed lots of the moment, people talk about AI, talk about automation as a way of removing public sector workers from the equation to save money, to make things more efficient, more convenient. We don’t yet have a good understanding, I think, of what are the sorts of things that we should be digitizing because actually they’re relatively transactional. It’s okay to digitize it and the things that actually you need to maintain those human relationships and we should be doing taking some of the savings from digitalization as well and applying that so that we’ve got really good relational services as well supported by technology but their starting point is that human relationship.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, so it sounds like you’re saying that you can digitize everything. There are certain things that should remain analog or more human.

Richard Pope: Yeah, so one of the projects I worked on when I was a civil servant in the UK was in the welfare system, so universal credit, which is our working age benefit. And that’s a digital first service, but it’s not a digital only service. It’s also something that’s delivered face to face in job centers and that is at least in at least the policy is set out that it’s supposed to be a coaching relationship so that it’s about giving someone direct support. It’s not just about saying to somebody this is your situation now go and do these things because that information just bounces off people unless you can actually build a relationship with someone and the information just bounces off.
Randy Semeleer: Yes, yes, it’s certainly a risk for that type of situation. On the user needs first website, at least on the Dutch section, there’s a… I read this article that was about what we could learn from the situation in the Netherlands when the COVID was spreading and the lockdowns were happening and all those kinds of things sure most people will remember. And the article was called five lessons learned from designing in a crash situation something like that. There are a few things that I wanted to highlight from it and then discuss with you. So one of the lessons I got from the article is that if there’s a big need you can find experts and also solutions quite quickly. So Oleg let me ask you is it possible to replicate the speeds which experts are found and solutions are created without such an extreme situation or is it just that extreme pressure necessary to get to those speeds and for experts input and solutions, what do you think?

Oleg Polovynko: I think that from UK, Mr. Churchill once mentioned, don’t spend challengeable times, if I am correct, but it’s about that, that when you have challenge, don’t spend it. And now I am really fighting for sharing Ukrainian stories in different digital products, in general, in country resilience, because it’s important for not only for Ukraine now, for all our neighborhoods and much, much bigger because, as I see, we are now entering a new age of our planet when we are not so united than when we was before. You see these trends from North Korea, from Russia, from Iran, and all of them trying to destroy that united what we had before. And that gives the trends which have, we have to be united with Western thinking world, with more civil society even, you know, because we are now again fighting on the border between barbarian values and civil values. And I think that civil values, it’s to share, to share that experience, to learn from the lessons. So, of course, we have to learn from the lessons of Israel, from the lessons of Ukraine, from the lessons of the COVID. To be honest, I am really thankful to COVID because when the full-scale invasion started, we was ready. Because on the COVID, we learned how to work remotely. So now our teams work from bomb shelters, from abroad, and et cetera, and this is doesn’t destroy the life of the companies, of the cities, of the structures.

Randy Semeleer: Yes. The companies as well, of course, benefits from this.

Oleg Polovynko: Again, more than 25% of the people displaced from Ukraine, and other 25 displayed in the border of Ukraine. So the people now working from anywhere. And that sends to COVID. Education process. It’s continuing, but a lot of, you see here in the Netherlands, how many Ukrainians, women with their children living there now. And they’re continuing education in Ukraine and have education here. So they have two education. And COVID experience gives us. So of course big needs make the catalyst. They are boosting you. But these lessons have to be learned by others if they want or they will face their big need and after that understood how to solve it.

Randy Semeleer: Yes, that’s an interesting perspective because of course COVID caused a lot of suffering but there’s actually also something to be grateful for about especially in your situation but perhaps that can be applied more broader or more broadly. I want to take one other lesson I got from this article I was speaking about before and that’s that it was stated that one of the lessons we can learn that loss can be developed with a design approach. So I just want to throw that to the table. Do you agree? Do you disagree? What do you guys think?

Richard Pope: I mean absolutely yes. I mean if you’re not if you’re not designing something, if you’re not explicitly designing something then or implicitly designing one so it’s best to have an idea of what you’re actually aiming towards. That said I think there was one of the takeaways for me from COVID was actually the way that we got these much more emergent network services so it wasn’t about someone just designing the thing it was about designing things interoperated, glued together through APIs, glued together through digital credentials so that certainly in the UK context it was possible to book a COVID test on a local government website, arrive and sign in using central government service and get the results, so you get sign in using the health service and then get the results from central government. And those things all work together and that was independent teams working together through open standards and an API is in credentials. And I think that’s really interesting because that’s not about designing the thing. It’s about allowing something more emergent and being able to work more quickly just to the previous point. I think that’s part of the feature of COVID was the ability to have independent teams working towards a common goal.

Randy Semeleer: Some tension in there because you state the benefit from using open standards and APIs to exchange that information but of course those also not only has to be secure but also has to feel secure to the citizens.

Richard Pope: Yeah those are two potentially two separate things. I think one thing that’s hopefully clear to politicians of all backgrounds now and especially what’s happening in the US at the moment with those and Trump. Digital is not a kind of a nice to have anymore. It’s a critical part of operating a modern government. So, we can’t think of these things as an add-on. I mean, I don’t agree with the approach in the US I think is a whole podcast in itself, I’m sure. But if you look at where those teams went, first they went for digital identity, they’ve gone for like where databases, where the money is, they’ve gone for digital services in a quite unpleasant way, but you can see what they think is important. Now I hope that doesn’t put digital government and some of those approaches kind of out of use from other governments who are a bit more progressive and want to use them for the public good. But like I say, there’s one lesson for politicians, hopefully this stuff matters now.

Randy Semeleer: Yes, I agree. Oh look, I noticed when Richard was stating that digitization is no longer nice, so I have you put your thumb up and you were nodding also quite a bit. You want to add something to that?

Oleg Polovynko: Even stepping back for design, because I want to mention that when we are starting design in stage, we always have some prioritization. And for example, in 2021, city of Kiev was first prioritization. This is convenient app for, for the residents. But in one year it’s changed and on first place came safety. Yes, of course. It’s become safety tool for the, for the residents. And we, we did a lot of nice thing. We even re-imagined Google because Google was closed for editing in Ukraine in some services for our residents. So the design stage of course needed and as it can be bigger and as we can much more points involve, like safety, like inclusion, like convenience, and et cetera, et cetera. It’s all conference about that. Yeah. That’s good. But, uh, from my point of view, some, some areas like civil defense was lack of attention in previous year. And I want to underline that on this stage, you have to put it on a table because in the moment of the challenge that will be on the first place. But in this moment, we use design thinking and we cooperate with the residents thinking about the civil defense. That’s helps us to create inclusion and safety service.

Randy Semeleer: Yes. Okay. Well put. Thank you.

Oleg Polovynko: And coming back to digitalization, I’m IT. I’m engineer by my education. I’m 20 years in IT and of course I’m fighting for digitalization. I think that to be honest, in GovTech, there is no rocket science now. There is a lack of rocket science, to be honest, because now we are solving the task, for example, if we’re talking about the agenda of the conference, there is mostly, we’re talking about process optimization, process management. Ask IT guys, the BPMN, this is business process management solution, was on the trend 15, 20 years ago. So in big corporate, these tasks, authorization, identification, process management, process optimization already solved. So we just need to share that experience in GovTech and fastly adapt it. This is, from my point of view, especially here in Europe, the adaptation of new technology, this is the most longest part. UK is on the first place, they are fighting very fast, Go UK, their approach was the example, but again, we are in the new age. We have to be ready for AI agent. So all these open data framework, what we are living before have to be everything redesigned now and prepare for AI agent because we see what’s happening in one year. And in GovTech, we have lack of AI solutions. Some countries now implementing their model language, other than solve Ukrainian do that, for example, Portuguese do that. So these countries goes in there, but it’s only about the languages. But we have big stack of open data. We have a lot of data about activity, about transportation, about utilities usage. All this data needed for AI agent. I want to pay the bills in one moment, communicate it with, with the Chat GPT, yeah, I want to plan my trip fastly. So all these solutions already have to be redesigned. I think that the Google maps and that way, how we are using transportation now in two years will be totally different. Yeah, I agree. And again, I want to see that the cities and the city authorities involved in this process, not again, Google designed that process without them and they have to leave with that after.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that when I’m not recording podcasts, I’m a UX researcher and I noticed that a lot of things design-wise, how workflows used to be designed for example, a lot of the stuff is going to go out the window maybe already but at least, but certainly the next few years because a lot of those things are going to be conversational with the adoption of the LLMs by other organizations as well. So I think the next couple of years is going to be very interesting also about how things are going to be designed and less emphasis on designing how it looks but more emphasis on designing those agents that users and citizens can interact with at least from my perspective. One of the things that we came up with while preparing for this episode is that there are quite a few difference how certain governments tackle something compared to others and there are certain countries that have a sort of what you could say one app to rule them all approach. They make an app where you can, where they put all their services into and that has both pros and cons. You could say that the pros that by that you can simplify your entire landscape, your IT landscape also. But you could say that the con is that it makes the application more complex to use because it has to contain a lot more. So if you think about one app to rule them all or giving every services its own little corner on the internet, how do you strike a balance between those and is it even possible abstract proper balance what do you guys think?

Richard Pope: I’d say a few things on that I think just to get out of the way we shouldn’t be designing apps and services around the organizational structure of government doesn’t mean we should hide that we should be able to find out who’s responsible who’s accountable for a service but we shouldn’t have an app for every ministry and department. I think we should also acknowledge that digital centralizes so digital has the capacity to centralize power in a new way so when we talk about creating a single website or a single We’re not just talking about user convenience, we’re actually talking about the balance of power within government. And so, if you look to, which I write about quite a lot, but if you look to India and the investments it’s made in digital infrastructure, identity and they’ve done a bit of stuff in other LLMs, but mostly like digital identity, digital credentials. That is a centralizing effort and it creates tensions relative to state-level government. I don’t think they’ve quite, they’re working through what that means as a society and they’ve got a very active civil society and you need an active civil society to help figure out the implication of new technology. So digital has the capacity to centralize. The final thing I would say is that different technologies have different affordances. So in the UK we created gov.uk, a single website for government. It’s lots of websites on different domains but it’s all managed essentially there are governance processes around it as a standard design system. It’s really lots of websites but it appears it presents as a single thing. Apps are not the web. Apps are inherently more centralized. They can do a lot more. They can you know have access to if I go on to listen to an app it can tell how fast my heart’s beating and where I am and what I have for dinner not quite but you know they have a lot more information. If you have a single central app and you’re giving it permission you’re kind of essentially de facto giving every part of government access to that information. So I think the place we end up with is actually with apps as opposed to websites is multiple things. More focused. It doesn’t mean governments don’t have a kind of like a central star but I think you’ve got things orbiting around it. That’s an okay metaphor to use.

Randy Semeleer: Interesting, interesting metaphor also. Anything you want to add Oleg?

Oleg Polovynko: How many apps ING has, for example, ING Bank? We don’t know, because you have several apps internal for some field force management task, for some branches, and they have several apps for front. So as James mentioned in the book about that we’re building the platform, we are talking about the process and doesn’t matter for me is it came from the Department of Transportation or it came from Department of Education. So of course we are in the moment of the creation platforms around government structures and about on the city level. Now in this moment, these platform have multi-channel of communication. We have to be inclusion, so we are still communicating in SMS, via notification through the radio, as we mentioned. So all channels have to be included, but apps gives you trust because they are secure and they are designed especially for that task, what you try to solve. So there is no limitation in app. That’s the site of technology. Is it enough capacity of connections? Is it enough capacity of the resources on the backend to deliver the service? Because for example, our national state app, DIA, even distributing TV, because as I mentioned, misinformation and manipulation. So where is to receive the right signal? because mostly people watching now TV in internet. And you can change the signal, you can change the site, so you can make some manipulation around it. But if you are in state level app opening the TV, you understand that this is official. So that’s our challenges. That’s how we solve. So, but it’s enough, for example, for 40 millions country, we have one super app with sharing the documents, sharing some services, and sharing TV. So it’s okay to create such big app for the country. We already tested and we show example how it works. My personal opinion that the state level have to cover the state task, but on the local level or municipal level, we have separate app because it’s combined transportation, all mobility services in the city and all services, what you need in the moment of needs or in some special moments when like the residence, birth of children and et cetera. So all this task, you just know that I have one point of contact. I can ask, for example, I’m really expecting the implementation of AI on front of the civil services. That’s, that’s, we will be cool when I’m on my language, I can ask how to find the service in the city. It’s not solved to be honest in mostly cities now.

Randy Semeleer: No, I agree. There’s still challenges to, to conquer. When we speak about an app that offers all those kinds of services, do you think that in your opinion that the municipality should put all the services for also the different target audiences, for instance you have residents, you have entrepreneurs in a city but also tourists or should those groups be services by different applications, what do you think?

Oleg Polovynko: I think that, for example, how we solve that in our application in Kiev, you have registration and in that moment, for example, from the number we see, are you residents or not?

Randy Semeleer: Yeah.

Oleg Polovynko: If you’re residents, you have more options in here. If you’re just tourists, you have less option. For example, Kiev Digital, when makes a translation of application in English, so So we have Ukrainians, there is a native, and we have English version. English version is more limited. There is no, for example, petitions, because petitions are for residents. And some similar cases, so you cannot use digital line for some civil services. So in this case, you can divide in one app easily, give more functional, based on your For example, in our application, we even have my working certificate, not certificate, it’s like my working card, that I’m working here. Because for example, householdings, the repairmen groups now working in business network in your household. How you can trust that these people on their work. This again, this is Ukraine case. For example, in the center of the Kiev, this is the capital. So we have government water and high-level security. And for example, somebody placing antenna on your roof. How you can be sure that this guy is not somebody with bad, bad things? Yeah, you just came, show, show officially city app. Show your QR. Are you working here or not? And with your app, you can check.
Randy Semeleer: Yeah, so that goes back what you spoke about earlier about the trust, that’s important. Richard anything you want to add on to that?
Richard Pope:Yeah, I’m just to add on something to that and maybe come back to the point about either or. Sure. Is it central or multiple? I think it’s interesting but those things you need to be able to prove that somebody on the roof is doing the right thing, they’re going to be the same infrastructure you need when it comes to AI agents and automation in the future, like how you can prove that it is and is doing what it should be.

Randy Semeleer: So an AI agent should be able to identify itself also?

Richard Pope: Well I think if you want more automated eligibility, more automation, more proactive services of which Ukraine has been doing the lead on, if you want more of that then you need more digital verifiable facts in circulation. So you need to be able to prove that someone is eligible for a benefit, is registered disabled, has the right to work, for example. And those things are useful for citizen interactive services, but they’re also useful for automation between different parts of public sector in the future agents as well. This question of I don’t think it isn’t either or when it comes to is it a central, single central thing or is it a local thing. Just to follow up on something Oleg was saying, I think it’s actually some more blended approach I think is my reading of it. It’s not a single channel. It’s digital allows someone to start something in an app, go to a website, do something face to face on the high street and that could be a single experience. As I mentioned earlier, we can have experiences that are mirrored in the public and private sector with appropriate governance. you can start a service locally and end up in central government. So digital starts to break down those old certainties of it’s either public sector or private sector, it’s either central government or local government, it’s either the phone channel or the digital channel. Those start to break down and we get things that are much more blended in terms of users experiences. Now that all comes with its own challenges in the actually one person’s experience of services could be radically different to another’s and how we make sure we maintain a common understanding of how services work and how we can improve them. I think that’s the future we’re heading towards.

Randy Semeleer: Interesting. So, Oleg, if you can give an example about how in an extreme situation communication maybe worked well, maybe didn’t work so well and how that impacted its citizens, what comes to mind?

Oleg Polovynko: You can remember last October, there was big flooding in Valencia.

Randy Semeleer: Yes, yes, I have family there, so I definitely remember.

Oleg Polovynko: Yeah, if you watch on a map from satellite images, after the flooding started, there was the city which was almost not touched, but this area on the left side of the river was fully destroyed. And our team make deep dive discovery of all communications which goes through the state level and local level. And that was total mess. Because the ministry of ecological, who is responsible for critical notification about hurricanes, any kind, they put the red flag at 7 a.m. on the morning that rain falls and there was high level of the water. Till the 11 a.m. almost nothing communication on the local level. But the police and the fire rescue service was overloaded already. Only in 2 p.m. the mayor of the office placed the message, video message, in X. So not official website, not local news channels, on X. When he achieved huge wave of negative response and people sent the photos what’s happening in their houses already, they deleted this post in one hour. And only in 4 p.m. started communicated that stay home, that there are high levels of water, and only at 8 p.m. they launch President Alert, you know, which goes above any program on your telephone, only in 8 p.m. So they spent 12 hours for communication. And in 8 p.m. they notified, “Stay at home. It’s dangerous.” That was useful. More than 300 people died. The cost of that is just cross the river. Because if you know the Valencia, this dam built by Romanians. So they already know about this river, about these problems, 2,000 years. Now they need just to notify, guys came from this area in the center of the city. Spend this day here, even sleeping in your car. But your car was safety, and you will be safe. But we saw all these highways full of totally destroyed car. The economy of Valencia feels that for, I think, nearest five years.

Randy Semeleer: Wow, that’s a captivating example.

Oleg Polovynko: This is a good example.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, it is.

Oleg Polovynko: It shows how you can just implement some easily moment, just communication, trustable communication, that’s all. Yeah. And if Valencia have such instrument, after this case, all tourists, local residents, they will be fan of this channel of communication. But when you post after the delete, it’s not about trust. It’s not about care.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Oleg, you did speak about this earlier in the podcast already for a bit, but I just wanted to give you the opportunity to share what lessons about the digital rollout in Kiev you want to share with our listeners.

Oleg Polovynko: And starting from the numbers.

Randy Semeleer: Sure.

Oleg Polovynko: We talk about, for example, Kyiv Experience, they implemented platform with Super App, Super App after three and a half year working. This is municipal app. It’s developed by the city, all code based owned by the city and support is doing by the city team. It has 4.8 stars on Apple and Google stores. 4.7, 4.8.

Randy Semeleer: Quite high.

Oleg Polovynko: Uh, based on the pooling inside the application, which did, uh, every year, how you satisfied about this application, what new you want to add in the next year and so on, 98% of positive feedback. We have five graduation, but four of them is positive, one is negative. So 98% is positive. I think that these numbers we achieved thanks to that, that we have was focused on user needs.

Randy Semeleer: Yes.

Oleg Polovynko: Because all roadmap for past two years for the next features was created by the residents and we are fighting for the maximum level of the citizen involvement. Thanks to that, we have more than 3 million downloads in CT with the 3.7 million registration. So that numbers shows that when you really give the channel for the residents, where they can communicate two way, where they can participate in petitions, initiate them. For example, in 2023, when we launched petition in application, there was huge raise of votes. Now it’s millions of votes for the questions what started in the city. but before there was several petitions per month initiated through the website. Because everyone understood that collect votes on website, it’s tricky, it’s quite hard. You really have to take the arm of residents and explain him how to vote. When we design petitions in Kyiv Digital, The first design, which was proposed by design team was really similar to Tinder when you can swipe your petitions.

Randy Semeleer: Swipe left, swipe right.

Oleg Polovynko: Yeah. And we said, no, no, no, it’s too much. Let’s leave one button.

Randy Semeleer: Okay.

Oleg Polovynko: But to be honest, thinking from now, that was a good idea because this is user experience and users already know how to do that. What’s the question? So now petitions have millions of votes. So that’s what I am sharing. Fight really for user-centric approach in your cities. Make the highest level as, as you can involvement citizens in decisions. And after that, even if some decisions will be wrong, you all together in open communication, we solve it.

Randy Semeleer: Those are some impressive numbers, I would just say, Richard, don’t you think?

Richard Pope: Absolutely. I think for me, this is at the heart of when we describe digital public sector design, this is at the heart of it. Actually, this is what I’m going to be talking about at the conference later. I think it felt like at times, my experience having worked in the public sector, we’ve kind of adopted some West Coast American principles of design around ease of use and user-centered design that’s very transactional and very consumer based. I think the public sector is different and it’s about that co-production with the public and it’s giving people an opportunity. Like the example there of residents of key being able to vote and submit petitions and prioritize the features of the app. That’s what public services are about. They only get better through that sort of co-production, that sort of feedback loop. You know an iPhone is successful because loads of people buy it. You know that Google is successful because loads of people use it and click on advertising buttons. Public services are better. They need those feedback loops and we need to start designing them into services. It’s quite new in a lot of ways. Actually, we won’t be able to look to the commercial world for some of those. We’re going to have to invent some of them ourselves and think about how do we transcribe public sector values to apps, to AI agents, to future technologies that are waiting around the corner for us. I mean that’s the job of public sector designers for me, not just about simplicity.

Randy Semeleer: I agree. Okay that’s a good point to end on I think. We’ll leave it at that. I’m just going to note a few things that were said during this conversation to emphasize them. The importance of trust really is a recurring topic in this podcast and also important to realize that there are different kinds of trust and once you realize that you’re conscious of that then you can act on it also. In extreme situations it’s important to remember that the last mile to inform citizens is often taken care of by municipalities and they in those kinds of situations they really need It’s critical that they get trustworthy information. Well, we spoke about the war in Ukraine and how that impacts Kiev also, but what is also important to think about that any area or any city or any region can be struck by a disaster and when that happens then the things that are arranged well but also the flaws, they will come to the surface. So yeah, that can happen anywhere so it’s important to realize that you have to be prepared for those kinds of situation also with your infrastructure, with your communication systems. There can be struck a balance, I think we agreed upon, between putting things in one location or in one app and using multiple platforms but it’s important to think about the difference between web and apps that they are used different, can be used different, apps have different capabilities so it’s important to keep it in mind while you’re designing that because in the background things can be centralized more and digitization can also be used to centralize those systems. Feedback loops that are designed in how we or how you work are important because then it’s easy to get that information from your user, from your citizens. And I want to end on with the importance, people that are listening to this are probably not surprised by it but still it’s important to always keep in mind a strong focus on user needs and have citizen involvement and really, as you put it, fight for that user-centered approach and then you do it together and then when something is wrong also fix it together. So that’s it for this podcast, for this episode. This was my conversation with Richard Pope, the author of Platformland and Oleg Polovenko, advisor to the mayor of Kiev on digitization. Richard and Oleg, a sincere thank you from my end, from all of us at User Needs First for your time, your knowledge and all your insights. It’s been great. Thank you for that.

Richard Pope: Thank you.

Oleg Polovynko: Thank you. Stay with Ukraine.

Randy Semeleer: Thank you for that Oleg. So our strength from all of us here to you and your country people, we send with you. Thank you for that.

Oleg Polovynko: Thank you.

Randy Semeleer: That is it for this episode. Thank you for listening. Are you interested in more interesting conversations like this one? Subscribe to the podcast through Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your podcast app of choice. If you subscribe it will be easy to listen to a new episode. It’s also very helpful if you leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Does this episode contain something important for your organization? Share the episode with your colleague, manager or executive official. Do you want to learn more about these topics? Visit international.gebruikercentraal.nl or for Dutch speakers gebruikercentraal.nl. You can also find these links in the show notes. Dear listeners, in this podcast we explore perspectives across borders. Still, keep in mind that while borders may seem to divide us in many ways, we are all connected. Until the next one. This episode was produced by Elka Helmers, Victor Zuydweg, Jessica Straetemans, Jeroen Schalk and myself, Randy Semeleer. Editing and audio engineering by André Dortmund. Social media by Elka Helmers. A special thanks to the Meervaart Theater where this episode was recorded.