This article was written by Oleksii Sobolev, CEO of Prozorro.Sale, Ukrainian state-owned IT company.

  • The problem: Every emergency, like a war, is a great challenge for the citizens and states against which it is waged. In particular, the main task for the state institutions is not to collapse, but to continue to provide services for citizens and businesses.
  • Why it matters: In order to win the war, Ukraine needs strong institutions to restore the country by preserving operational activity, working together, and maintaining reforms.
  • The solution: Ukrainian state-owned IT company Prozorro.Sale is preserving Ukraine's anti-corruption and rule of law efforts through the digitising processes, making them more convenient, efficient, and fast, even during wartime.

On February 24 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has continued for almost seven months. According to the "Russia will pay" project of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), the total amount of damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure has reached $114.5 billion.

In Ukraine, a lot of private and state-owned companies were forced to shut down their operations due to active hostilities. Prozorro.Sale, the Ukrainian state-owned IT company and a state electronic trading system started running six years ago. Despite the war, the company managed to preserve its business thanks to the robust contingency plan which was developed prior to February 24th. Wartime priorities of Prozorro.Sale, at this stage, are: supporting the team, keeping operational activities, and thinking strategically about our company's role in Ukraine’s reconstruction.

Focus on leadership and talent while building effective and accountable institutions

The number one priority is, of course, keeping the whole team physically and mentally safe. We’re a team of around 50 people running an ecosystem facilitating transactions for hundreds of millions of dollars, so every team member is crucial for successful operations.

From February until May, every morning, the whole team had a brief video call, where everyone reported if they were okay, whether they were able to evacuate, had access to safe relocation routes, and if they required any help. It allowed everyone to keep in touch, the team felt supported, and everyone was ready to lend a hand if they could. At times when some team members did not have access to the Internet or were on the road, others took on additional responsibilities.

We also found out that the level of trust within the team increased during the war. Conducting a regular bi-annual survey among team members, we observed that people began to trust each other and the company even more (from 82% in 2021 to 88% in June 2022). That helped to cope with the stress, although the war significantly affected employees' psychological wellbeing. Not everyone was able to overcome war-caused exhaustion, devastation, fatigue, anxiety, and panic and therefore were not able to continue to work as effectively. This motivated us to launch free assistance with psychological first aid (PFA), individual basic psychosocial support, and short-term, low-intensity interventions (including support groups and webinars) with the grant support of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. Now, thanks to the psychologists involved, employees in distress can solve their inquiries and get back to work. By the way, work itself is a good stress relief, especially at the start of a war. People like being busy and understanding that they are working on something that is helping their country to win.

These efforts allowed us to keep the entire team, which is capable of continuing work on the implementation of reforms.

We believe that Ukraine could become a textbook example of a large-scale, transparent and efficient recovery process.

Keep the operational activities and support economic resilience

The state electronic trade system Prozorro.Sale didn’t stop operations for a single day, despite the risks and threats associated with data protection and cybersecurity. Within a month, we transferred the whole system to Amazon Web Services digital cloud outside of the country, so now the system will be operational regardless of any Russia’s terrorist attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure.

The war affected property sales heavily, and as a result, revenues to the budget significantly decreased. Since the outbreak of the war, the electronic trading system has helped to attract more than UAH 1.3 billion (USD 36.3 million) to the state and local budgets based on the results of auctions for the rental and sale of properties. In the conditions of catastrophic damages to civilians and critical infrastructure, as well as the channelling of significant funds for the military and social payments for Ukrainians affected by the war, every earned million is a much-needed boost to the economy. That’s why continuous operations of Prozorro.Sale are crucial to our victory.

Today, our goal is to get sales back to pre-war levels. In May 2022, we saw economic activity starting to recover bit by bit; organisers were more active in announcing auctions for the sale or rent of real estate, land, and other assets. In September, the Ukrainian Parliament also restored the possibility of wartime privatisation of state and municipal enterprises, which have not been generating income for a long time. What's more, it will be possible to sell assets through the system and find new owners, in this way businesses will be able to continue or resume their activities.

Think globally and strengthen good governance

As a state-owned IT company, we understand that we cannot stay apart from what is going on. In addition to our own operations, we looked for needs and problems that we could help to solve with our expertise. Below are several examples of such projects developed during the war.

Enterprises relocation. In March 2022, in Ukraine, the issue of relocation of businesses and enterprises from the war zone to safer regions became a huge challenge for the entire state. The Ministry of Economy of Ukraine leads the organisation and coordination of this process and launched the government programme on the relocation of enterprises. Our role as an IT company was to help the Ministry digitise the processes and create an electronic platform where applications can be submitted, processed, and tracked throughout the relocation process (from the request to the resumption of business operations in the new location) across multiple ministries, state companies and regional administrations. As of September 12 2022, 913 enterprises have already moved their production facilities to relatively safe regions.

Ukraine’s reconstruction and recovery. Ukraine must begin its reconstruction and recovery today, without waiting for the end of the war or the enemy’s surrender. That is why our company joined a number of other public organisations, state enterprises, initiatives, and international partners that formed the RISE Ukraine coalition. Its purpose is to spread, establish and help implement key principles by which reconstruction should take place such as: digitisation of processes, equity, inclusion, and zero tolerance to corruption. In order to carry out such a large-scale and complex recovery and modernisation, which no country has done before, we must start thinking differently — in terms of fair and transparent rules, accountability, justice, and sustainability of processes. We believe that Ukraine could become a textbook example of a large-scale, transparent and efficient recovery process.

Charity. In the last seven months, Ukrainians have embraced charity as a national movement and key to their success in the war. That is why we launched charity auctions. Everyone can compete for valuable, symbolic, and memorable items related to Ukraine. All money raised from the sales will go towards the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine or humanitarian aid to Ukrainians. We have already managed to direct almost UAH 7 million (USD 189,000) to charity and currently are working on a unique platform of charity auctions of the Russian war trophies. If you ever wanted to bid for remnants of a Russian tank, stay tuned for updates from Prozorro.Sale!

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