Digital State under Fire: Public Administration and Public Service Digitization Reform in Ukraine
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Ukraine has become one of the most visible contemporary cases of public sector digital innovation. This article examines how Ukraine's public administration and public service digitization reforms have evolved from a pre-war modernization agenda into a wartime resilience system. Using a qualitative documentary case-study design, the article synthesizes evidence from international organizations and Ukraine government reports. The analysis shows that Ukraine's reform is not simply a story of a mobile application. Its distinctiveness lies in a hybrid service delivery model that combines the Diia portal and application, the Administrative Service Centre network, mobile front offices, interoperable state registers through Trembita, registry-building through Diia.Engine, and transparent reconstruction tools such as DREAM. The findings also show that wartime displacement, infrastructure damage, cybersecurity risks, digital inequality and civil service capacity constraints make digitization a public administration reform rather than a technical reform. The article argues that Ukraine's experience contributes to the literature on public sector innovation by demonstrating crisis-driven digital public infrastructure: a model in which digital services, interoperability and front-office accessibility are jointly used to preserve the citizen-state relationship under extreme pressure.
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7203941862