Electronic public services in the construction sector have saved customers 70-90% of their costs by speeding up service delivery and eliminating corruption. The total anti-corruption and economic effect of the introduction of digital tools in the construction industry over almost five years amounted to UAH 21.8 billion. This was stated during a public discussion at the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) by Valeria Koval, Deputy Director of the Directorate for Electronic Services Development at the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.
She said that currently, 13 electronic services and the e-Renovation service in the construction sector are available on the Dія web portal of public services, aimed at both ordinary citizens and business representatives. These include: notification of the start of construction work, application for urban planning conditions and restrictions on land development, issuance of a construction passport, declaration of readiness of a facility for operation, as well as services under the state programme to assist owners of damaged and destroyed housing - e-Restoration. In total, more than 210,000 applications have been submitted for all construction services since 2020.
"Previously, developers had to submit large stacks of documentation to the former State Architectural and Construction Inspection, and those who resolved issues through corruption could submit documents that did not comply with the law but still obtain permits. All processes were closed, and no one controlled the procedures for issuing permits. Now all documents are uploaded and displayed in the Unified State Electronic System for Construction, and everything can be tracked, including how many times refusals were issued and the reasons for them,’ said Olga Sydorchuk, head of the Committee on Regulatory and Legislative Activities of the Confederation of Builders of Ukraine and a lawyer.
The head of the National Agency, Viktor Pavlushchyk, noted that construction and land relations are one of the areas most affected by corruption, both among the population and among businesses, as confirmed by the results of annual sociological surveys conducted by the NACP. However, if we look at specific corruption situations in construction, we see a decrease in corrupt practices for most services — from obtaining permits to start construction to putting facilities into operation. The decline in corruption between 2021 and 2024 coincides with changes in the industry, particularly its active digitalisation.
"On the one hand, we have a number of digital solutions from the state, but on the other hand, there is still insufficient awareness and user experience with electronic services, especially among the population. According to our research last year, only 23% of citizens are sufficiently aware of electronic public services related to construction, land and real estate. And although the relevant indicators are growing every year, there is still work to be done. After all, the more citizens know how digital services work and trust such tools, the greater the anti-corruption and economic effect of these services will be in practice,’ emphasised Viktor Pavlushchyk.
According to Ukrainian MP Olena Shulyak, the most corrupt services in the construction sector are the provision of urban planning conditions and restrictions by local authorities. As an example, she cited journalistic investigations, according to which a group of businessmen spent $4 million to obtain this document for construction near the Pyrogov Museum in Kyiv.
‘This is the answer to why local authorities do not want to update and develop modern urban planning documentation and why the urban planning cadastre is moving so slowly,’ said Olena Shulyak.
According to her, in order to eliminate corruption schemes in the provision of urban planning conditions and restrictions, they must be generated automatically in the Urban Planning Cadastre. This requirement is included in the State Anti-Corruption Programme (SACP) for 2023-2025.
NACP Head Viktor Pavlushchyk added that, in general, the SACP provides for the implementation of 130 measures in the field of construction, land relations and infrastructure to address a wide range of issues, from lack of transparency in urban planning to abuse in the development of cultural heritage sites and an imperfect system of state control and regulation in construction.
"More than 10 separate measures of the State Agency for Urban Development are aimed directly at the digitalisation of the industry. These include, in particular, the creation of a single electronic urban development cadastre as a unified platform for the provision of all administrative services in the field of urban development, the automatic generation of urban development conditions and restrictions, etc. All these steps are not just about moving key procedures online; they are primarily about creating uniform and transparent rules for all participants in the process. Currently, most of these measures are still in the implementation stage, and we hope that by the end of the current SACP, i.e. by the end of the year, significant progress will have been made on each measure,’ said Viktor Pavlushchyk.
During a public discussion organised by the NACP entitled ’Building without corruption: How Electronic Services Are Changing the Rules of the Game in the Construction Sector,’ representatives of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ministry of Digital Transformation, local communities, civil society organizations, and business presented and discussed the results of surveys, analytical studies, and calculations that allow for an objective assessment of the role of digitalization of services in the construction sector.
For reference. In 2020, Ukraine launched a Unified State Electronic System for Construction (USESC), which became the basis for the digitalisation of the construction sector. After its launch, some of the services related to the registration of construction activities were transferred to electronic format and made available through the Diya portal. The users of these services include architects, design engineers, technical inventory specialists, employees of architectural and construction control authorities, developers and construction customers, as well as ordinary citizens.
