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Lessons Australia Can Learn from Ukraine’s Digital Resilience

04 Feb 2025
By Nikki Trewin
Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Denys Monastyrskyi. Source: Andrii Kriepkych / UNDP in Ukraine / https://t.ly/DfOrv

Ukraine’s e-governance platform, “Diia,” has proven essential during the war, showcasing the power of digital innovation and resilience. Australia can learn from Ukraine to strengthen its digital infrastructure, improve public trust, and ensure strength in future crises.

Modern warfare is no longer confined to tanks, missiles, or frontlines. As the war in Ukraine has demonstrated, battles are increasingly fought in the digital domain, where maintaining critical government services is just as vital as defending physical borders. Ukraine’s “Diia” app, which connects over 19 million Ukrainians with more than 120 public services on one platform, has emerged as an unlikely hero of national services in wartime. For Australia, Diia offers a roadmap for building robust digital infrastructure that empowers citizens, enhances accessibility, and ensures national resilience; notwithstanding its ability to streamline government functions for its citizens, including broader day-to-day services, ensuring greater levels of accountability, and reining in corruption and scams.

Ukraine’s digital journey

Ukraine’s digital resilience wasn’t built overnight. Over the past decade, the country has endured some of the most sophisticated cyberattacks in history. The 2015 and 2016 power grid hacks, which left hundreds of thousands temporarily without electricity, were stark reminders of the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure—systems and assets essential to the functioning of a society, including energy, water, transportation, and communication networks. These attacks were attributed to Russian actors, specifically Sandworm, an advanced persistent threat (APT) group, also known as APT44, considered Russia’s most sophisticated cyber threat actor. Then, in 2017, state-sponsored Sandworm was also linked to the NotPetya attack, a sweeping campaign that crippled government agencies, banks, and businesses and caused billions of dollars in damage globally.

These early crises forced Ukraine to take drastic action and adopt a forward-thinking approach to digital resilience. By the time of Russia’s second, and this time full-scale, invasion in 2022, Ukraine had already laid the groundwork to defend its digital infrastructure.

The digital frontline: Diia

Diia was not a reaction to the Russian invasion in 2022; it was the result of years of strategic planning and innovation. Launched in 2020, Ukraine’s e-government portal “Diia,” meaning “Action” in Ukrainian, began as an e-government app similar to Australia’s MyGov, designed to centralise access to essential services. Yet, what began as a convenience tool, quickly became indispensable when war broke out.

When millions of Ukrainians were displaced by conflict, Diia ensured they could access critical government services remotely. The app facilitated the replacement of destroyed identification documents, the application process for financial assistance after losing homes, and the registration of displaced persons. It also provided access to healthcare records and education credentials, while supporting business registrations and even enabling drone donations to the war. In a matter of weeks, Diia evolved from an e-government portal to a cornerstone of Ukraine’s resilience, providing a digital thread that held the nation together even as physical infrastructure was destroyed.

Lessons for Australia

Australia is no stranger to digital services, but our system remains deeply fragmented and overly bureaucratic. Platforms like MyGov offer limited functionality, primarily focusing on basic services such as tax filings, Centrelink payments, and Medicare access, with clunky interfaces and a reputation for frustration. In contrast, Diia’s strength lies not only in its seamless, user-friendly design but in its comprehensive scope—a quality Australia has yet to replicate.

Implementing a comprehensive digital platform akin to Ukraine’s Diia in Australia would require overcoming significant hurdles. A primary obstacle is the public’s trust in government digital services, with 56 percent of Australians having concerns about how the government manages data security and privacy. This apprehension is further heightened by the 2,784 data breaches reported in Australia over the past three years, including high-profile incidents such as the Optus and MediBank breaches, leading to understandable wariness among citizens about sharing their personal information.

Additionally, Australia’s digital infrastructure development has been sluggish. The country recently slipped to 37th place globally in the Digital Quality of Life Index, primarily due to low internet speeds attributed to the National Broadband Network’s poor infrastructure.

Ukraine has faced similar challenges. Public trust in its government had historically been low due to widespread corruption, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and lack of transparency. In 2018, only nine percent of Ukrainians expressed confidence in their national government to govern effectively, among the lowest levels globally. Of course, Russia’s unceasing and open aggression has contributed to a shift in public sentiment, fostering national unity and resilience. Just as equally, however, Ukraine’s story could have unfolded very differently. The lesson here is that real change requires both courage and capability—qualities Australia possesses in capacity, but often falls short on in terms of political courage.

From reactive to proactive

To be sure, Australia has not faced the same urgent, unifying pressures that Ukraine has encountered as a result of war. Perhaps the most important lesson for Australia from Diia is its proactive vision.

For Australia to develop a similar platform, it would need to think and act pre-emptively. Addressing public trust issues, accelerating digital infrastructure improvements, and perhaps recognising the latent necessity for such a system to enhance resilience against future crises, would be key first steps. Australians can’t afford to assume that our crises will be any less severe. Whether it’s escalating natural disasters or cyberattacks, Australia’s current system doesn’t guarantee the level of resilience needed to meet citizens’ needs under pressure.

Australia’s approach to digital resilience has often been reactive, patching gaps after they’ve been exposed. Ukraine, on the other hand, began strengthening its digital infrastructure well before the full-scale 2022 invasion, learning from the warning signs of Russia’s aggression since 2014. By anticipating future needs and investing accordingly, Ukraine was able to rapidly scale up its services when war escalated—to be sure, with significant help from partners such as NATO, the European Union, the United States, and others—demonstrating that resilience is built in peacetime, not in panic.

Public-Private collaboration

Diia’s success is the product of partnerships between Ukraine’s government, its domestic tech sector, and key international allies. The Ministry of Digital Transformation worked closely with local startups and private companies, creating an ecosystem of innovation that allowed the platform to evolve rapidly. International stakeholders also played a pivotal role: USAID, which is currently undergoing a critical marginalisation of its powers and mandate under the Trump administration, provided funding and technical expertise; Estonia shared best practices from its world-renowned e-governance systems; and organisations like the EU and nations like Sweden contributed financial and technical support. Major tech companies such as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services bolstered the platform’s cybersecurity and data infrastructure, ensuring its resilience under pressure. These collaborations were essential to making Diia not just functional but transformative in its design.

Australia has the technological expertise to replicate this model but has yet to foster the same depth of collaboration. While initiatives like the Digital Transformation Agency aim to improve e-government services, they often lack the agility and integration seen in Ukraine’s approach. To build a Diia-like system, Australia would need to engage its domestic tech sector and international allies not just as vendors but as true partners, co-creating solutions that adapt to citizens’ evolving needs.

By investing in security infrastructure, learning from models like Estonia and Ukraine, and prioritising user-friendly design, Australia can build systems that are secure, integrated, and resilient. The challenge lies in whether Australia can take decisive action now—learning from Ukraine and international partners—or whether we will wait until external pressures force our hand.

Nikki Trewin is a graduate of RMIT University with a Bachelor of International Studies and a former Australian Outlook Assistant Editor Intern at the AIIA. You can find her on LinkedIn here.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.