Oleg Polovynko: Building resilient digital cities

Oleg Polovynko: Really two different worlds, what I’ve seen before, and to be honest, that maybe the most kind and so comfortable, convenient community, what I saw where I have chance to share that, what I want to share with you. And I was IT director in the moment when the war in Ukraine started, full-scale war. Originally, we are more than 10 years in conflict, but right on that position, I was IT director of the Kiev, this is capital of Ukraine. And we started transformation of our convenient focusing infrastructure, city IT infrastructure, in safety mode. And that story, what we have, I think is quite important for all society now, worldwide. Because our circumstances, starting from even 2020, when all of us faced the COVID, so we somehow adapt. And in the moment of full-scale invasion, I was really thankful for COVID. Because the lesson, what we learned from the COVID, helped us to be resilient in the moment of the war. Who is familiar with the meaning black swan? Yeah, here it is in Amsterdam, you can see white swans. And before the 16th century, nobody knows that black swan exists. And Nassim Taled wrote a great book after that, rewrote several times. But the meaning, that some event which happened, which fully changed playground. And here it is a list of black swans, which are flying five years, what we are all facing. And in this moment, it is quite important to understand the context, where it is happening. And don’t lose that signals, what we already have. Because in Ukrainian case, the war that was, wasn’t black swan. That was next episode of that war, what we had in 2014. And the most important key thing, what I want to show you, that it’s not only about the Ukraine. And that what we mentioned, it’s quite close to Europe, right in the center. That is happening in October. It’s quite strange to see, for example, how that situation was solved on the government level. Because in the moment when we have, everyone has a telephone in our pocket, Spain government and Valencia government spent more than 10 hours to announce people about this crisis in their cases. It’s starting from the early morning and only in the evening when the cars floating on the streets, people receive the notification on their phone. And there was, on the Spanish, more than 15% of the population of Valencia, it’s foreigners. So it’s not understandable, all of them. But this case shows that it can happen in hours everywhere. And the way how the city municipality act, the same in all crises. Because you have to evacuate some big part of your territory, help to the people who was stuck on that territory. The questions what you have in Europe, yeah? And that what, understanding that, case of Valencia, for example, yeah? How would you find that this flute is here? For example, we discussed that in the, in Monday there was sound alarm, sirena, here in Amsterdam. If you don’t know that this is test, for other people it’s act to do. But, that’s not what I planned to show. Oleg, it’s the, the, the, the, the question is in the app. So, those are the answers that people were typing in, in the Yalentj app. How will you find out that there’s a flood? And the next, what you will do. And we can imagine this situation from, from these different aspects. As, as the residents of this city, or you’re a tourist in this city. And there will be two different strategies, fully. And, when you achieve your answer for this question. The most interesting, how you will do without internet connection. Because, all of this part, this is classic situation of the crisis. Because, the flooding destroys the base station of telecom operators. You will, don’t have the coverage. And, in Ukraine, when we solve all this task on municipal level. We understood that, first of all, we are really thankful for our state level. Because, starting from 2019, we had big digitalization push from Ministry of Digitalization. Which is created. And, they solved, very needed for any city solutions. Which is not fully solved in Europe. This is about personal identification. So, all the documents of Ukrainians now easily can be shared between government structures. And, on the city level, we can easily work with that registers. But, the platform has to be the ecosystems. And, now, I will show you how it’s solved in Ukraine. But, the most important, when you see our example, it’s to think how it’s organized in your city. How you will solve the same task in your city. And, here, of course, we have two different points of views. One is the citizen. And, in the moment of crisis, you need not just notify. In Valencia, it was notified. Yeah? But, we need notification in the right moment. With the right personalized instruction. And, to be honest, now, with that level of technology, what we see in corporate business, on the IT companies, on the platforms, it’s already solved. So, we have the gap between the city IT systems and classic organized corporate IT systems. And, this gap around 10 years. So, organized first thing, it’s quite easy if you have instrument as a city. Safe inclusion and convenient travels through the city. And, that’s have to be part of this resilient structure. Because, this public transport, in the moment of crisis, it’s become evacuation transport. And, it’s solving totally different tasks, but as public transport. Infrastructure resilience. That was tested, started, that what we all are facing on. It’s cyber attacks, destroying of any global platforms. For example, like railway or transportation systems can be cut off. Not fighting for some innovants. But, it has to work and give guarantee. And, for us, how we see that, when any residents, any citizens feel the pulse of the city through the application. Through that channel, when he understands that it’s trustable. And, the trust is maybe most important. Maybe most important. Because, when full-scale invasion in Ukraine started, we have huge misinformation campaign. So, in first day, we read in the news that Russia already took all the territory there, in the city of our capital, and etc. But, that was not true. But, this trustable channel, in the moment of crisis, is crucial. Because, I saw the polls of the mayors. And, mostly part of the mayors. And, mostly part of them tells that miscommunication and non-trustable channel of communication with the residents, this is one of the biggest problems. If we’re coming back to Valencia case. In the middle of the day, the mayor of Valencia shoots a video where he tries to explain that everything will be good. That the rain is falling down, so don’t worry. And, posted in the X. On his official account. But, in X. That post was deleted in one hour. Because, it was not the right strategy. And, they understood it too late. So, the trust in the moment of crisis is crucial. And, the residents have to feel feedback loop. Not that only I wrote the request and I don’t know when it’s happened. From point of city, it’s a little bit different. You have to understand real picture of your city. Have real time monitoring systems. And, make decisions based on that. And, prepare scenarios. Because, as I mentioned, doesn’t matter what’s happening. Maybe it’s national disaster. Or, some man-made disaster on the factories. For example, evacuation is the same scenarios. Teams, of course, they have to understand what to do. And, that’s really challengeable. Because, in the moment, for example, of massive evacuation. You have to move your team. And, remote work, thanks to COVID. It helps us. So, if, come back to Ukrainian experience in this case. Firstly, that is trusted communication. That’s what I mentioned. And, it really has to be, if we talk about the channel of communication. It has to be multi-channel. Because, it can be radio. It can be SMS. It could be push notification. And, already, thanks to innovation. In this situation, Ukraine, in this situation, start first big sandbox for Tesla. Not for Tesla. For Starlink. Yeah. And, for example, now, with them, our telecom operators already propose a service direct to sell. So, when you guarantee receive notification, even if you don’t have telecom coverage, you will receive it through the satellites. And, they guarantee now short message. And, they plan to expand that. So, in the nearest future, when you’re dreaming about the future, in this case, we don’t need telecom operators. So, in the nearest future, we will have satellite service for such tasks, for example. Engagement and feedback loop. Now, I will show on the case of Kyiv, how we work with the community and community engagement. User-centric approaches. That’s why we are here. Because user needs and user-centric, it’s quite familiar. When you care about them, you create the ecosystem and platform which helps you implement digital solutions. And, public trust. So, first of all, how Kyiv Digital K started. Now, it’s an app. When we started, that was an app for transportation company, mainly. That was the main functionality, what it solved in the beginning. Transportation and parking in the city. Now, this is 3.3 million downloads app. And such infrastructure, where we have different municipal services, all of them combined in city command control center. And through that, we deliver that to our residents. It’s combined all this direction, starting from public security. After that, smart mobility, ecology. Ecology, it’s about the quality in the air with the sensor, which is connected to city measure systems. because we had manipulation with the air quality in the cities, which goes through the private data sensors. Mental health, it’s critical now, and this will be expanded because more than 70% of our residents have PTSR, and we have to work with it. Culture, it’s events, and the pulse of the city. Education, it’s connected schools. And electronic democracy, we will come back. This is the most interesting because I’m really proud with this part because the moment of war really boosted usage of these services. And now we have almost more than 1,000 petitions initiated for past two years by our residents. We created some cool things. First of all, when we designed the user flow of petitions, how it will go, our designers firstly proposed, let’s do it like Tinder. Swipe left, swipe right, so firstly you vote for petitions. We declined that idea, but the numbers are really huge. So citizens involved, we, based on this scenario, changed the streets more than 600 streets, changed in Kyiv. Don’t repeat that. Never. So many streets change in one moment, it’s really kill all naming in your city. But citizen engagement, good, you see the number of the votes, and this is general number of application. which is really cool, you can check the numbers on Apple and Google store, and that gives us satisfaction rate. And satisfaction rate, it’s, we measure it based on the polls inside the application. And when residents have feedback, they’re really satisfied. and this is municipal application. And this is the number of the transportation part. But, of course, this is number of the downloads, unique weekly usage, it’s 1.6 million. So this is the real number of the usage. And, of course, if we talk about the main services, the first was transportation, the next was critical notifications, and the third one was wartime services about the specific critical notifications. So, for example, one of the most popular services of last year was the shadow of electricity availability in your apartment. So, and that’s proof that that what we implement increased Kiev in index of usage of digital services and bring several awards going around user centricity. So, if we make some conclusion, and I want to present our story to you from a positive way, because we are dreaming about the future, I think most important is to ask yourself what’s on the way to achieve such service in your city, and think how you will solve similar tasks in your cities. And in this moment, I think, when we start solving and finding solutions, that’s helped us to be more united. Because what’s really worrying me is that our world, which was built on some values, which make us closer, and we are sharing what we are knowing, now we have a big challenge, and our world is divided. We see that some countries don’t want to be together, and even Europe, yesterday, aliens, become aliens. So, in this moment, they act in the same values as your enemy now. So, that’s what we see, and in that moment, your community have to be united, and that’s what’s helped Ukrainians to survive, because me, honestly, was in situation, awareness center starting from that morning, and I saw how closely Russian came to the city, and we saw that on the monitoring systems, when some CCTV cameras disappearing, some network cut it, so in this moment, you see on your network how they are entering in region, and in some cross of the city, and in this moment, we see how our community shrinks, and after that, it stopped, and in the city of Kiev, the minimum level was 800,000 active telephones per night, that was the minimum level on the march, and after that, it stopped recovering, so we were so close to not exist as a country now, only 800,000 people who left in the city of Kiev, and that’s all, and after that expanded, now we have the numbers, which is before, and in this moment, for example, we solved the task as reimagining the Google, because the company of Google closed all editing of the maps, and usage of the maps from business side, and from the government side, because they don’t understand what to do with this situation, but for the people who came in the city in that moment, they see in applications that grocery stores work, that pharmacy work, but they don’t work, they out of the service, and the staff of this store evacuated, and we have collected as application requests from the businesses who are ready, how long to work today, and distributed it through the application, because for some social categories, that was becoming a huge problem, for the refugees who came from the east and from the west in that moment in the city, they cannot find something for survival, not even for some pleasure, so that was small one thing, which is really easily solving when you have a tool, and become a big problem when you don’t have any tool, and for example, Google operating in critical messaging, but to be presented in your city, they have to connect with them, to have some web view, form, and cooperate, Google don’t have such infrastructure, and the cities don’t have it, but in the moment of crisis, cities and local authorities become the last mile, who is helping, and who is caring about the residents, and that’s the main thing, what I want to think about, because our experience, we transform, that give us some boost, and now I think we have one of the best super apps in Europe, because I don’t see the similar, I see several examples on the West, so Dubai, the China cities, quite close to that, but such concept quite easily to implement, and when you have it, you feel your city like your smart home applications, quite familiar, let’s be resilient together, and if you have any questions, I will be glad to answer. Thank you for one more. Thank you.

Jeroen Schalk: Thank you for listening to this audio recording. This keynote was delivered at the User Needs First International Conference 2025 in Amsterdam. You can find all about this conference on gebruikercentraal.nl slash recap 2025. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your other podcast app of choice. You want to learn more about the User Needs First community? Check out international.gebruikercentraal.nl or for our Dutch listeners, gebruikercentraal.nl. Till next time.