BRDO, with the support of the Union of Ukrainian Entrepreneurs, is starting to collect data to form a rating of ease of doing business in regions – Regional Doing Business 2019.
This year’s rating will be the third study defining whether the five most demanding business procedures are carried out in a friendly manner. For example, connecting to electricity networks and allocating a land plot for real estate construction. Data collection will be carried out according to an adapted World Bank’s methodology by questioning entrepreneurs who started their business throughout the year.
This is the second year that we will also assess a new area, namely the quality of electronic services, by using which business owners can receive services online.
“Last year’s rating revealed very unexpected trends in this area. Having assessed them, we identified three regional behavior types. The first type, which is the most popular one, is to ignore the Internet and do not provide services through it. This is typical even for such large cities as Odessa. The second one is to use the nationwide system of electronic services. Dnipro chose this type of behavior. The third one is to reinvent the wheel, that is, own services. And some cities, for example, Lviv, had excellent results, while others failed,” the BRDO Deputy Head Denys Malyuska said.
That is why, starting the new study, BRDO will share the best last year’s practices, which we strongly recommend to use in the cities.
For example, the overall situation with electronic services for the country is deplorable. Most cities didn’t even understand that in the digital era, working through the usual channels of interaction with entrepreneurs is a waste of time for both parties.
However, there are good exceptions. One of them is a ‘Lviv citizen’s personal account’, which user-friendly interface and volume of electronic services are impressive. https://egov.city-adm.lviv.ua/sts/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fsts%2f. An Ivano-Frankivsk center for administrative services portal http://www.cnap.if.ua/einfo and a Vinnytsya transparent office http://transparent.vmr.gov.ua/default.aspx are somewhat less advanced, but also very good.
Dnipro and Khmelnytsky decided not to spend money on the development of their own individual portals and chose the portal i.gov to host their electronic services, and this is also acceptable.
While there are so impressive regional leaders, a Kyiv citizen’s personal account at https://my.kyivcity.gov.ua is a real come-down. This portal was the only online tool that required to read special instructions to use it. In addition, the only possible way of identification was a Kyiv citizen’s card, which not every Kyiv citizen has. Not to mention potential investors who could develop their businesses in the capital.
Kharkiv with its https://e-kharkiv.org/ and https://dozvil.kh.ua portals should be mentioned among this year’s newcomers, which can offer competition for last year’s leaders. The functionality of these resources for the business audience is very limited, but that’s still a good start.
We hope that these practices will help local authorities improve the situation with electronic services in the region, thereby improving their position in this year’s Regional Doing Business 2019 rating. The full version of the rating “Ease of Doing Business. Regional Doing Business 2018” is available at http:/rdb.brdo.com.ua/.