On August 6, a solemn ceremony of the signing of the Memorandum of Cooperation between the State Agency for E-Governance of Ukraine, EGOV4UKRAINE and 10 cities of Ukraine on implementation of a pilot project Vulyk which is a virtual workplace for Administrative Service Centres (ASC) officials took place.

Participating in the event were First Deputy Head of the State Agency for E-Governance of Ukraine Oleksii Vyskub, EGOV4UKRAINE Team Leader Mari Pedak, Coordinator of the U-LEAD Program for Europe Implementation Policy Maria Tyshchenko and official representatives of the cities selected for introduction of the pilot project.

First Deputy Head of the State Agency for E-Governance of Ukraine Oleksii Vyskub told about the importance and relevance of the implementation of the information system: "Ukraine is actively continuing to develop a service approach in service provision for its citizens. Like our colleagues from other countries, we prioritize the introduction of online services that provide an opportunity to use public services 24/7 from any convenient place. However, an important aspect remains the improvement of the quality of providing offline services by automating the work of the ASCs. Currently, there are about 700 ASCs operating in Ukraine, and almost 80-85% of that number lack information management systems for the provision of services, which would significantly improve the efficiency of the service provision. Therefore, we initiated the introduction of a typical information system to provide uniform high standards of work of the ASCs throughout the territory of Ukraine, which was named the Vulyk".

The Vulyk information system will increase the availability and quality of administrative services provided by the ASCs, and will ensure the reliable storage and protection of information. It will accelerate the work of the ASC administrators through the transition to electronic document management and the simplified access to state registry data in real time. The Vulyk will be based on "cloud" technologies, therefore, it will allow to provide technical support remotely and quickly without the hiring of local IT specialists.

"The information system Vulyk transfers the centers for administrative services provision in the digital era. This will speed up the provision of administrative services to citizens and legal entities tenfold through providing access to public registries and online data exchange via the Trembita system", said Mari Pedak, EGOV4UKRAINE project leader.

The development of this system began in March 2018. The ASCs which were selected through open tenders from over 100 applicants from difeerent regions of Ukraine have been involved in pilot project:

• Kyiv Oblast: ASCs of towns of Ukrayinka, Rzhyshchiv and Obukhiv
• Khmelnytskyi Oblast: ASCs of the city of Kamyanets-Podilskyi and the village of Humentsi
• Kherson Oblast: ASCs of the cities of Kakhovka and Nova Kakhovka
• Odesa Oblast: ASC of the city of Yuzhne
• Zhytomyr Oblast: ASC of the city of Olevsk
• Ternopil Oblast: ASC of the city of Chortkiv

The EGOV4UKRAINE project (“Support for E-Governance Decentralization in Ukraine”) is part of the Ukrainian decentralisation support programme U-LEAD with Europe, which runs from 2016 until 2020. EGOV4UKRAINE aims to improve the public service provision in Ukrainian local governments by developing and launching the data exchange system Trembita and the information system Vulyk for ASCs. By the end of the project, it is expected to set up and modernize 600 ASCs to be able to provide all together hundreds of administrative services.

Joining Vulyk is voluntary and free of charge for ASCs for the duration of the project until 2020. Priority will be given to newly created communities and small ASCs that cannot afford big investments in IT systems and IT professionals.