In Ukraine, a digital platform has been created to gather all information about the reconstruction of war-damaged or destroyed objects. How will it operate?
Why are we talking about this?
If you ask a Ukrainian to explain how the war-damaged housing and infrastructure will be reconstructed, they are unlikely to be able to do so. A citizen may assume that the restoration will be funded through reparations obtained from Russia or with the financial assistance of European Union countries.
Perhaps the Ukrainian might recall news about countries sponsoring specific regions. For example, in Bucha, Howard Buffett will reconstruct homes for the residents of Vokzalna Street, which was hit by a Ukrainian Armed Forces attack on a column of Russian vehicles on February 27, 2022.
Reconstruction risked turning into tens of thousands of individual projects without prioritization and coordination, accompanied by numerous low-trust procedures.
How to create a comprehensive picture? This question was posed a year ago by dozens of civil society organizations united in the RISE Ukraine coalition. The result of their work is the DREAM system, which will gather information about all reconstruction objects in one place.
What is this system and why is it needed?
DREAM is a digital platform, a kind of “single window,” that will contain information about funding, management, and monitoring of housing, building, and road reconstruction projects. DREAM will serve as the sole digital channel for all reconstruction projects at the national, regional, and local levels.
The system will gather all available data from state registers and display them in the passport of each object in real time. The government assures that the DREAM ecosystem architecture includes safeguards against corruption.
DREAM stands for Digital Restoration Ecosystem for Accountable Management — a digital restoration ecosystem for transparent management. The development is funded with the support of the UK government. Eventually, the system will be transferred to the Ministry of Communities, Territories, and Infrastructure Development.
What information will DREAM contain?
The system will record and monitor every stage of the project’s life cycle, including damage registration, funding, procurement of goods and services for restoration, construction works, and commissioning. The Ministry of Infrastructure emphasizes that, thanks to DREAM, information about each stage of the implementation of reconstruction projects will be publicly accessible for the first time.
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Open data will enable the comparison of objects, projects, communities, and regions, allowing for the assessment of progress in each indicator. The information will be available in the form of tables and graphs. This will assist donors in making investment decisions, while recipients will understand what improvements are needed to secure funding.
The following registers will be integrated into the platform:
- register of damaged and destroyed property.
- Geoinformation system.
- Industry-specific infrastructure reconstruction management system.
- Diia (electronic government services platform).
- Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs, and Public Associations.
- Unified State Electronic System in the construction sector.
- Prozorro (electronic procurement system).
- spending.gov.ua (public spending transparency platform).
DREAM will gather data from the mentioned registers.
Who will be able to use the system?
All officials, including mayors and heads of administrations and united territorial communities, as well as international financial organizations, donors, journalists, and anyone else. Every citizen will have access to the platform.
What does it provide? What problem does DREAM solve?
The system provides a plan of action for local self-government. The website includes instructions for the head of the united territorial community on how to restore a school destroyed by Russian troops.
The extensive volume of open data in DREAM allows for real-time monitoring of the progress of reconstruction for each house, road, village, and region. Construction participants, including project owners, contractors, and regulatory bodies, will upload documents and record every action they take in the system.
The standard cycle of object reconstruction includes damage assessment, planning, public hearings, design, Prozorro tendering, construction work, commissioning, and monitoring. Each step will be recorded in DREAM.
“We will know which projects are being implemented, at which stage they are, how pricing is determined, the source of funding for the work, and the stage of implementation. A similar working principle is used in Prozorro,” says the Deputy Minister of Communities, Territories, and Infrastructure Development, Oleksandra Azarkhina.
So, stealing during the reconstruction won’t be possible?
The system itself does not contain direct safeguards that would prevent contractors from inflating the cost of restoration work and thereby obtaining excessive profits. In principle, it should not contain such safeguards, considering that avoiding such risks is extremely difficult, if not impossible.
However, DREAM provides an opportunity for everyone, without exception, to monitor the restoration process and thereby point out possible violations.
So, in the event of detecting abuses by local authorities or contractors at any of the previously described stages, donors, media outlets, and representatives of the public will be able to directly approach the Ministry of Communities, Territories, and Infrastructure Development, or the State Agency for Restoration and Infrastructure Development to suspend the work.
The Head of the Agency, Mustafa Nayyem, has promised that the government will respond to each of these cases and, if confirmed, will cancel tenders in accordance with the established procedure.
What other benefits does DREAM offer?
According to the Minister of Community, Territories, and Infrastructure Development, Oleksandr Kubrakov, the “everyone sees everything” principle embedded in the DREAM system will allow for quick and comprehensive engagement of foreign financing for reconstruction projects.
Communities will compete for investor funds, and the more successful ones will be those that complete procedures faster and present more attractive projects.
“International organizations, thanks to DREAM, will be able to select projects for funding through the ‘project showcase.’ Having information about procurement and regular reports on project implementation, investors will be able to track the progress of all funded projects,” stated the Ministry of Community, Territories, and Infrastructure Development.
Thanks to the “showcase,” communities will be able to present their projects to donors. The DREAM website has a guide that contains a list of actions at each stage of the project and a database of templates. The ecosystem will allow projects to be taken from idea to implementation.
The information from DREAM will also be used in international courts in cases of collecting reparations from the Russian Federation.
See also: How does the war in Ukraine affect the environment and deepen the food crisis?
Is the system already operational?
Yes. DREAM currently contains over 5,000 projects. In November 2022, the pilot project of the industry-specific infrastructure restoration management system, one of the components of DREAM, was launched. The system will be officially presented to the international community at a conference on Ukraine’s recovery in London on June 21-22.
What problems does the system not solve?
DREAM will be rendered ineffective without a stable influx of funds. Standardizing the principles of fundraising poses a greater challenge for the government than their distribution.
Legislation provides for several sources of reconstruction funding, including confiscated Russian funds (already amounting to UAH 17 billion from Sberbank), funds from the state budget (with UAH 35.5 billion in profit from the National Bank of Ukraine for 2022), funds from international partners (the US promises to allocate UAH 56 billion), and donations from private individuals through the United24 platform.
These sources appear to be unreliable and subject to funding interruptions in terms of reliability and continuity. Moreover, the current available and promised amounts are far from sufficient to cover the damages inflicted by Russia, which currently amount to $144 billion.
Another issue is that DREAM suggests addressing reconstruction matters at a tactical level without prior resolution of strategic issues.
Society needs to address fundamental principles. Should we rebuild the old or construct something new? Should we prioritize rapid restoration or conduct comprehensive infrastructure modernization? Should we develop new urban planning documentation or build in a chaotic and in a piecemeal manner in violation of the law? Should we build where people currently live or where they will return in the future?
At present, there are only partial answers to these questions.
What if there is a shortage of funds? How will it be determined which objects to prioritize for reconstruction?
Experts from the Ministry of Communities, Territories, and Infrastructure Development, together with RISE, have developed a Project Prioritization Methodology. This methodology involves assessing the alignment of submitted projects with the priorities of reconstruction.
The prioritization index is calculated using a formula that includes factors such as the level of needs, coverage (the number of population whose needs are met by the project), the urgency indicator of the needs, and the additional impact indicator (energy efficiency, environmental quality improvement, inclusivity, job creation).
Originally posted on Economicha Pravda. Translated and edited by the UaPosition – Ukrainian news and analytics website
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