Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1542142
PART 4. FULL-SCALE CONFLICT In the early pre-war years of Zelensky's presidency, the changes stemming from the digital transformation process were focused mainly in the civilian sector. Zelensky came to power as a "president of peace" and was not overly interested in military matters, preferring diplomacy. The situation in the AFU was frozen and little changed in 2019–2022. Only the full-scale invasion of 24 February 2022 turned that situation upside down. President Zelensky recognized the utter failure of previous policy and the development of the armed forces and the defense sector became not only a matter of his political prospects but a question of the state's survival — and of whether he could continue to exist as a politician. All the processes that occurred in the army after 2014 repeated themselves, but on a much larger scale. Massive expansion of the army again brought in huge numbers of volunteers and many mobilized civilians without prior military experience. Ukraine once again saw a huge mobilization of the volunteer movement to support the armed forces, and long- established pro-defense foundations such as Come Back Alive grew into large organizations with extensive structures and significant influence on processes inside the army. Authorities decided to transfer the experience of the Ministry of Digital Transformation to the defense sector. THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PROCESSES OF THE AFU CAN BE DIVIDED INTO THREE SEPARATE DIRECTIONS: Direction One – Digitalization of the Bureaucratic System A team of young programmers was set up inside the Ministry of Defense, largely drawn from the Ministry of Digital Transformation. Katerina Chornohorenko became deputy minister of defense responsible for digitial transformation in the military and led the team. Their task was to debureaucratise the army: eliminate paperwork, simplify and digitize the logistics and mobilisation systems, create appropriate databases. They set out to build a "Diia for the military," i.e. a digital infrastructure for civilians subject to conscription (the Rezerv+ app) and directly for soldiers inside the armed forces (the Armia+ app), to make it easier to access information and to complete all necessary formalities, as far as possible remotely, without having to go to a recruitment centre or contact command in the case of a soldier. These applications are already fully functional, widely used and ANALYSIS