On 25-26 September, the Personal Democracy Forum was held in Kyiv. It is an annual conference taking place in multiple cities worldwide that brings together top technologists, campaigners, government officials, journalists, and academics for two days of game-changing talks, workshops, and networking opportunities on civic tech challenges.
It is the second time the Personal Democracy Forum was held in Ukraine. This time, PDF participants focused on both the positive tendencies and possible risks that can be brought by technology.
More than 200 participants from Ukraine, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Hungary, USA, Lithuania, Germany, Romania, Croatia, Israel, Georgia and other countries, learned how open data may be used to secure more trustworthy elections, which electronic instruments may be used in oversight of the government and business institutions, and how to cooperate with local governments on data openness.
“It's the beginning of open data generation. We need to collect so much data before we can use it well. Why is it important to know about elections? If the election is trustworthy, the power is transferred peacefully, the elected officials are accountable, and the citizens can check whether they receive a proper representation of interests,” – representative of the National Democratic Institute (USA) Michael McNulty stated.
Civil Network OPORA's Analyst Oleksandr Kliuzhev told about the safety and privacy of citizen personal data, reminding Ukrainian experience.
“In the end of 2015, a few small modifications were made to the legislation, justified by an initiative against misuses committed by citizens. These modifications comprised two sentences: “The Ministry of Finance of Ukraine receives access to banking secrecy and personal data of citizens”. In February 2016, another sentence was added: “Bylaws shall be drawn up by the government.” Unfortunately, government resolutions didn't give the answers to basic questions of personal data protection: about which citizens the data is collected, what purpose of its collection and how it will be used, how often it is collected and what happens to the data next... There were some objections when the regulatory framework was adopted (I can describe this process as “the Ministry of Finance wants to know everything to prevent misuses that citizens may commit”), saying it's impossible to guarantee protection of citizens and their rights, that there are no oversight mechanisms, it's hard to tell which are the principles of such inspection and how it is going to influence the citizens. However, all these objections were met by beautiful and correct answers, which highly resonated with civil society moods: “we have a political will”, “we will change the situation”, “ we guarantee the confidentiality”, “we guarantee protection of personal data for citizens”. However, the truth is: words give you no guarantees in relations with the government,” – he said.
Cosmin Pojoranu (Funky Citizens) shared his experience of using Facebook as a media instrument during the riots on Romania. Representative of the Clerical Hundred Denys Bihus assured that charity can be fun, and representative of the Electronic Frontier Foundation Jillian C. York told who owns the internet.
Olha Aivazovska, Electoral and Parliamentary Programs Coordinator of the Civil Network OPORA, have stated in her closing speech:
“Today, the major task of active young activists, who want to use technologies is to find a golden middle between technophiles and technophobes. I have a real example of what happens in Ukraine around electronic voting on elections. Technopiles will say that it's the only instrument allowing to combat any falsifications and receive a fast result, which may not be changed because the system receives it instantly, and it is analyzed and accepted after that; that it is a solution for any administrative resource, voter bribery etc., which, unfortunately, exist in our society. Technophobes will say: the power, as an instrument, shall never be trusted completely to the technology, when it comes to political or electoral processes. It is much more difficult to change or destroy the paper than the data in a huge system, which receives the results.”
On 26 September, the second day of the PDF, participants attended workshops, learned about innovations in anti-corruption legislation and how to make election data easy for understanding. In particular, Michael McNulty (the National Democratic Institute, USA) told about key stages of using the election data on his workshop “Make the election data easy for understanding: processing and visualization”.
Personal Democracy Forum Ukraine was organized by the Civil Network OPORA, TransparenCEE, TechSoup, and ePaństwo Foundation in cooperation with the OSCE/ODIHR and UNDP, supported by the USAID Ukraine.