Meet the innovators who want to digitise democracy in Ukraine!

Digital Democracy Lab

At the end of the project, the participants will present their ideas to a selected group of experts in Kyiv in order to explore implementation possibilities. In the 4-month program, the innovators will be supported by the betterplace lab, the project partner 1991 Civic Tech Center and other experts from the field of democracy promotion. The project is funded by by EVZ Foundation „Remembrance, Responsibility and Future“.

Following the call for applications, 15 digital innovators were selected to take part. In June, we brought them all together for three days of workshops, from defining purpose and vision, to viable social business models, to impact analysis and storytelling.

D-Lab group picture

During three days, the participants had the chance to refine their project ideas in the amazing venue of CityLAB.

The workshop was also attended by a number of expert speakers, beginning with Benjamin Seibel of CityLAB who welcomed the participants and explained the relevance of the workshop venue: CityLAB Berlin, an experimental laboratory for the city of the future, where representatives from government, civil society, academia, and start-ups can collaborate and develop new ideas for enhancing the livability of Berlin as a city. The CityLAB combines elements of a digital workshop, a co-working space and event space into a single location where participation and innovation are jointly pursued.

Friederike Niemann came with welcoming words on behalf of the EVZ Foundation, which funds D•lab. Amongst the further expert speakers were Eileen Wagner from Simple Secure, on Trust and HumanUX, Adriana Groh from the Prototype Fund with an input titled “It’s not all about tools!”, as well as Victoria Dykes from TBS, expert on the Open Data Movement.

Eager to learn more about the activists striving for a better democracy by digital means? Then keep reading:

Meet the Participants!

Viktoriia Zinchuk's idea: Ally is a Social Initiatives marketplace which aims to gamify the process of establishing and developing grassroots projects. In essence, this mobile app will work simply as a Pokemon Go game but redesigned for civil initiatives. Every user will be able to create, locate or join virtual geolocated profiles of social initiatives.

Kateryna Chernohorenko: "CheckGoodsBot is your personal assistant for quickly choosing safe goods. No longer need to monitor many resources or seek advice. Just sign up and find out about dangerous products from the world's 5 largest resources. In a few seconds you can learn about the negative effects that the goods can cause. CheckGoodsBot - a checkpoint for health and quality of life!"

Nataliia Druhak: “Digital Thinker is a digital tool for teenagers who are native to the digital world but still don‘t have the immunity to resist the influence of information flow. The solution I offer is an Instagram account where teens can find out in a simple, clear, and interactive format what the manipulations may be behind the information and how they can avoid these traps. The project aims to boost teens’ skills of critical thinking.”

Iaroslav Kontsevyi: "UkrSkarga is a tool that provides ready to use templates and instructions on where to send complaints, as well as working hours. For users who didn’t know how to complain properly but see a problem and complain in social media."

Nikita Lukianets’ Open Ethics initiative aims at bringing transparency standards to AI. For AI companies that want to build trust with their users, Open Ethics is a platform providing an easy way to self-disclose and shed light on the black box of AI decision-making.

Nina Kurochka: "My idea is about an information campaign in the form of a youth news channel aimed at educating the youth on civic and social matters in simple and clear language. Its uniqueness is in regular challenges/marathons to learn new skill in short period of time like 2-3 weeks."

Mykola Stasiuk: "My idea, KMU.Discussion is a public discussion platform aimed at collecting qualified opinions on legislative bills. It provides for open and transparent procedures, while enabling the government to gather data intelligently. This should reinstate people's support of legislation and make for smarter policy planning.

Yanina Basysta's project Detox Ukraine (detoxukraine.org) is an interactive online map of industrial pollution sources in Ukraine with the tools for citizens to report unmapped emissions by enterprises, and to group together for the organisation of environmental protection campaigns.

Oleh Cheslavky’s Digital participation platform Civic Space (Spilno) is opened for public online decisions that combines wide communication opportunities of social networks with potential of e-democracy tools and built on principles of openness and transparency.

Regina Bondarenko’s project is called Pravomanbot — It’s a chatbot in the most popular messengers ( Telegram, Viber, FB Messenger) for getting free legal advices and creating legal documents. The main goal of Pravomanbot is giving Ukrainians free legal help and becomes for them their own attorney in the pocket. In such way, we hope to raise the legal consciousness of the people.

Volodymyr Holomb: "My project "Know Your Judge" is an open data tool that will create public awareness about the competence level of a judicial system based on metering of decisions made by all practising judges of first-instance courts further reversed or approved by the court of appeal."

G̀erman Mitish: “Selfmade.city it is a better version of your own city. It is the platform where you can find nearby people who share your daily concerns, team up to develop the solution, and receive help from NGOs, activists, local artists or municipality to bring that solution to life.”

Tetiana Derkach's idea: Create an App that helps government employees to define Key Performance Indicators, align them with bigger goals, evaluate their performance at the end of a cycle; make data available inside of government organizations and for tax payers; get comments/ feedback from tax payers and set the agenda for the next performance cycle. I believe this should help to re-launch public dialogue and make for more constructive evidence based interaction.

Viktoriia Drofa: "My project is for young people, who want to save information about their previous work experience in social area and complete wich were received on the work. I want to create digital tools which will keep meta data about all work experience, competence and with evidence about it."

Iryna Kyrychko: "Data is a safe and secure blockchain platform for investigative journalism, where journalists could keep the information, avoiding pressure, demands to remove data or to disclose identity. The platform shouldn't be controlled by anyone, but should be trusted by the community"

Stay tuned to find out about the pitches happening in Kyiv in September and follow our newsletter!

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