Among the speakers, there were many high-ranking officials, including the Minister of Justice, Deputy Minister of Defence, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, MPs responsible for legislative component, Deputy Director of e-Governance Agency, as well as speakers from Georgia, Poland, Estonia, Germany, and the USA.

 

 

"Our goal is to simplify people's lives. Every person who wants to get a particular service should be able to do it automatically. Our task is to make all procedures as simple as possible to minimize corruption," noted Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi in his opening remarks. "Only maximum openness and transparency in all spheres is able to save our country. IT is a kick that can crush corruption. Maximum transparency is what people, who destroy our country, are afraid of."

 

The Forum was plentiful in inspiring talk, motivational presentations, innovative solutions, new services, and many other interesting things.

 

Participants discussed issues of e-governance and e-services, learned about the world's best IT projects and computer literacy training programmes presented by international speakers, figured out the guiding fundraising principles for IT projects explained by representatives of international organizations and embassies, and explored issues of open data through expert presentations of the e-development strategy and the process of its implementation.

 

"It is very important for a common Ukrainian to feel daily improvement of his/her life through communication with the state. It is very simple daily stuff: small business registration, authorization, birth registration, marriage registration. These small experiences, either positive or negative, comprise a person's overall impression of the state and its effectiveness. We decided to start to change that daily stuff, related to the Ministry of Justice. However, we will not succeed without allies, such as local authorities and local community," said the Minister of Justice of Ukraine Pavlo Petrenko.

 

Speaking about the implementation of the transparency of finances, UNDP expert Halyna Kokhan presented the Open Budget interactive visualization tool (supported by UNDP and other partners) that takes the hundreds of spreadsheet lines that make up city budgets and turns them into digestible, visual-based infographics that residents can access on the city website.

 

 

 

Open Budget Lviv eGov Forum from Maksym Klyuchar

 

The organizers of the Forum were inspired by Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and embraced his "book burning" metaphor to teach people to change themselves and the world, get rid of bureaucracy, and move to a new stage of development and change.