How "license on your phone" became an instrument of national security
Tania Vakhrycheva explains the birth and growth of Diia, Ukraine's national government app
It started with two documents on your phone.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy ran on a common-sense platform. The everyman candidate, building on national recognition as a comedian, made campaign promises that seem obvious in hindsight, one of which was to deliver a “government app in your pocket.” And shortly after his election, a team of developers shipped the Minimum Viable Product: your driver’s license and registration on your smartphone.
That may not seem like much, but what they were building was a universal front-end for siloed, disparate departmental tools. Ukraine, like Canada, had many different logins scattered across websites, each with their own records of every citizen. Proving that you were, for example, entitled to unemployment insurance meant gathering information from all over the government. It’s a pattern we’ve seen before: A state that can’t talk to itself, and the citizen forced to be the synchronization layer.
Diia became that layer. The app could connect across departments—and knew whose data was authoritative—and assemble whatever documents were required. Soon, you could renew those documents on the app, and authenticate yourself with biometrics and passports.
And then war came to Kyiv.
The app quickly became a cornerstone of Ukranian resistance. Biometrics meant it could be used to clear checkpoints, or report spies. When invaders destroyed traditional radio and TV, Diia became an information lifeline.
We’ve spoken about Estonia before; it’s a great example of modern government, but critics are quick to point out that the country has a tiny population, and was able to start from scratch when it left the Soviet Union. Ukraine, it turns out, is strikingly similar to Canada—so the lessons are far more salient. And Canada can do what Ukraine did, before war forces us to do so. It just takes a common-sense leader who won’t take no for an answer.