Ukraine is already looking to a postwar digital future


The success of the DIIA app maps out a new path for the country’s economy. 6park.com
乌克兰战前的经济以农业和重工业为主，但政府官员现在将科技潜力视为关键支柱，并梦想以以色列为榜样，建设创业型国家。



This week Mykhailo Fedorov, the youthful T-shirt-wearing vice-prime minister of Ukraine, delivered a passionate speech to a packed audience in Washington. 6park.com
本周，乌克兰年轻的副总理米哈伊洛•费多罗夫(Mykhailo Fedorov)身穿T恤，在华盛顿向座无虚席的听众发表了一场激情洋溢的演讲。 6park.com
   
But unlike most Ukrainian delegations, he was not pleading for more aid. Instead, he had an idea to sell: a piece of digital innovation, known as DIIA, short for “state and I”. And investors should take note. 6park.com
但与大多数乌克兰代表团不同，他并没有请求获得更多援助。相反，他有了一个可以兜售的主意：一项被称为DIIA的数字创新，即“国家和我”(state and I)的缩写。投资者应加以注意。 6park.com
   
Three years ago, the digital ministry headed by Fedorov launched an app to enable citizens to perform private sector and government services on their phones. 6park.com
三年前，由费多罗夫领导的数字化转型部推出了一款应用程序，使公民能够在手机上执行私营部门和政府服务。 6park.com
   
Initially, it looked like a modest tool to “fight corruption and turn Ukraine into a digital state”, as Fedorov says. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, the app let Ukrainians verify their vaccination status. 6park.com
正如费多罗夫所说，最初，它看起来像是一个“打击腐败，把乌克兰变成一个数字化国家”的小工具。例如，在新冠病毒大流行期间，该应用让乌克兰人验证他们的疫苗接种状态。 6park.com
   
But its use has mushroomed to a startling degree. The app is installed on 70 per cent of all Ukrainian phones and 19mn citizens, about half the population, regularly access the 100-odd services found on it. 6park.com
但它的使用已迅速发展到令人吃惊的程度。乌克兰70%的手机都安装了这款应用，1900万乌克兰公民(约占乌克兰人口的一半)定期使用该应用提供的100多种服务。 6park.com
   
These include tools that give citizens the world’s first digital passport, enable them to get digital driving licences, organise construction permits, register new babies, pay taxes, make digital signatures and do banking. 6park.com
其中包括为公民提供世界上第一个数字护照，使他们能够获得数字驾驶执照，办理建筑许可证，登记新生儿，纳税，制作数字签名和办理银行业务。 6park.com
   
More recently, features have been added that teach Ukrainians how to fly drones (and shoot them down), receive refugee payments, report the activities of Russian troops and apply for reconstruction funds when bombs destroy their homes. 6park.com
最近还增加了一些功能，教乌克兰人如何驾驶无人机(以及击落无人机)、接受难民补助、报告俄罗斯军队的活动，以及在炸弹摧毁家园时申请重建资金。 6park.com
   
Indeed, the app is so effective that the US Agency for International Development, which funded part of its development with the British government, is working with Kyiv to export it. Estonia, for instance, is importing the DIIA code — which is striking since the Baltic state is itself a tech pioneer. USAID is now working with Zambia, Kosovo and Colombia for them to import the code too. 6park.com
事实上，这款应用非常有效，以至于美国国际开发署(US Agency for International Development)正与乌克兰政府合作出口这款应用。美国国际开发署曾与英国政府共同资助了这款应用的部分开发。例如，爱沙尼亚正在引进DIIA编码——这令人震惊，因为这个波罗的海国家本身就是一个技术先驱。美国国际开发署目前正与赞比亚、科索沃和哥伦比亚合作，让它们也能引进该编码。 6park.com
   
“DIIA is Ukraine’s best kept secret — we should all envy it,” Samantha Power, USAID head, tells me. Indeed, she suspects officials in America’s own “municipal and federal government” could also learn from the innovation, given the low levels of government digitisation in the US. 6park.com
“DIIA是乌克兰保守得最好的秘密——我们都应该羡慕它，”美国国际开发署负责人萨曼莎•鲍尔(Samantha Power)告诉我。事实上，鉴于美国政府数字化水平较低，她怀疑美国自己的“市政和联邦政府”官员也可以从这一创新中学习。 6park.com
   
This is striking — for several reasons. For one thing, DIIA provides yet another sign of Ukraine’s resilience. The fact that Kyiv has expanded the app in a war and defended it from cyber hacks is impressive. 6park.com
这是惊人的——有几个原因。一方面，DIIA提供了乌克兰复原力的又一个迹象。基辅在战争中扩展了这款应用，并保护它免受网络攻击，这一事实令人印象深刻。 6park.com
   
But this is just one instance of frenetic public and commercial digital activity in Ukraine, Power says. The sector grew 5 per cent in 2022 amid record digital exports (albeit from a low base). This happened even as overall economic output fell by a devastating 30 per cent that year. 6park.com
但鲍尔说，这只是乌克兰公共和商业数字活动热潮的一个例子。随着数字产品出口创纪录（尽管基数较低），该行业在2022年增长了5%。这是在当年整体经济产出大幅下降30%的情况下发生的。 6park.com
   
Second, DIIA also shows that we now live in an age of “reverse innovation”, to cite a phrase sometimes tossed around tech circles. In the 20th century, western governments and companies typically assumed that brilliant innovations started in the west and were then bestowed upon poorer countries. 6park.com
其次，DIIA还表明，我们现在生活在一个“反向创新”的时代，这是科技圈有时会用到的一个词。在20世纪，西方政府和企业通常认为，杰出的创新始于西方，然后被赋予较贫穷的国家。 6park.com
   
But that assumption was undermined when M-Pesa, one of the world’s first mobile money platforms, emerged in Kenya and was then copied elsewhere. Tech innovations have subsequently flooded out of China, also to be emulated around the world. This might also happen with DIIA, given that it makes government not only more efficient, but more accountable and transparent, too. 6park.com
但当世界上最早的移动支付平台之一M-Pesa在肯尼亚出现并被其他地方复制时，这种假设就被破坏了。后来科技创新在中国大量涌现，也被世界各地效仿。这也可能发生在DIIA身上，因为它不仅提高政府效率，而且提高政府负责任程度和透明度。 6park.com
   
“The legacy of the Soviet Union was corruption — if you wanted to apply for a construction permit or change a car registration, you had to pay an official. But DIIA removes that,” says Fedorov. 6park.com
“苏联的遗产是腐败——如果你想申请建筑许可证或更改汽车登记，你必须付钱给官员。但DIIA消除了这一点，”费多罗夫说。 6park.com
   
Power echoes this: “We [in America] have given around $15bn cash to the Ukrainian government, and I don’t think we could have done that without DIIA [because] this would have been untraceable in a prior regime and the Ukrainian government was famously corrupt.” 6park.com
鲍尔对此表示赞同：“我们（在美国）已经向乌克兰政府提供了大约150亿美元现金，我认为，如果没有DIIA，我们不可能做到这一点，（因为）这在之前的政权中是无法追踪的，而乌克兰政府是出了名的腐败。” 6park.com
   
But now, she says, “there is a digital trail going directly into the bank accounts” to track money flows, backed by geolocation tools. 6park.com
但现在，她说，在地理定位工具的支持下，“有一条直接进入银行账户的数字线索”来追踪资金流动。 6park.com
   
Third, DIIA also highlights one possible path for Ukraine’s future. The country’s prewar economy was dominated by agriculture and heavy industry. But government officials now see tech’s potential as a key pillar, and dream of modelling themselves on Israel. 6park.com
第三，DIIA还强调了乌克兰未来的一条可能道路。这个国家战前的经济以农业和重工业为主。但政府官员现在将科技潜力视为关键支柱，并梦想以以色列为榜样。 6park.com
   
After all, they say, Israel has previously shown that hostile neighbours need not impede growth — or at least not if massive defence investments are used to foster entrepreneurial civilian businesses, backed by a diaspora. Since Ukraine also has hordes of tech-savvy citizens, a diaspora and an increasingly entrepreneurial culture, officials in Kyiv are eager to tell potential foreign investors that it is the next “start-up” nation.   6park.com
他们表示，毕竟，以色列以前的经验表明，敌对的邻国不一定会阻碍经济增长——或者至少，如果大规模的国防投资被用于培育有创业精神的民间企业，并得到侨民支持的话。由于乌克兰也有大批精通技术的公民、散居海外的侨民，以及越来越多的创业文化，基辅的官员急于告诉潜在的外国投资者，乌克兰是下一个“创业”国家。 6park.com
   
A cynic might retort this sounds wildly premature while the war rages on. After all, Ukraine is struggling to get the weapons it needs to win. And while financial institutions such as JPMorgan and BlackRock have already signalled their readiness to help with reconstruction (and Visa and Google have supported DIIA with grants), inward investment (unsurprisingly) is low. 6park.com
愤世嫉俗者可能会反驳说，在战争如火如荼之际，这听起来太草率了。毕竟，乌克兰正在努力获得胜利所需的武器。此外，尽管摩根大通(JPMorgan)和贝莱德(BlackRock)等金融机构已表示愿意帮助重建(Visa和谷歌已经通过赠款支持DIIA)，但外来投资(毫不奇怪)很低。 6park.com
   
This is unlikely to change while conflict lasts. But, if nothing else, DIIA shows that necessity is the mother of invention — and that Ukraine has the ability to surprise on the upside. Non-Ukrainians should remember that — for military and civilian reasons alike. 6park.com
只要冲突持续，这种情况就不太可能改变。但至少，DIIA表明，需求是发明之母——乌克兰有能力带来意外的正面消息。非乌克兰人应该记住这一点——无论是出于军事原因还是民用原因。