Smart Interactions

Fragmentation in its various manifestations is the specific problem and main barrier for community development and addressing global challenges like poverty and other SDGs, which have negative impact on billions of people lives.

Our solution helps to address local issues and global challenges on the basis of more effective multi/cross-sectoral interactions with citizens participation and AR. Basic idea for greater efficiency: common barrier free multi-sectoral IT-environment of different actors and citizens simplifies cross-sectoral interactions and allows to solve issues for lower cost within defining and addressing issues.

Integrated in daily work of stakeholders and life of people it will provide better transparency, avoiding duplication, more effective use of limited resources, generate more trust and unlock new opportunities to address local issues and global challenges, which has not been feasible before.

During pilot within the program “Active Citizens” (AC) by the British Council with 68 partners in 24 regions of Ukraine, it was found that fragmentation in its various manifestations (the disconnect between real need and often perceived problems, institutions/sectors, fragmentation amongst community groups and within people, level of governance, inter-related areas, etc) is a common and serious problem for community development. AC program connects 68 countries and 971 partner organisations, which was convincing for a conclusion that this problem impacts on the lives of many millions of people globally. Another aspect, a gap between local issues/actors and global challenges/actors, was a reason to start world’s campaign “ShiftThePower” by the GFCF, where we’ve participated since its launching at the Global Summit in Africa. On the other hand, studying SDGs process detects fragmentation in its various manifestations as a barrier for addressing global challenges like poverty, problem ecology and other SDGs, which have negative impact on billions of people lives.

Despite the diversity of its manifestation, fragmentation has common inter-related causes like lack of transparency, trust, motivation and effective mechanisms for interactions, especially multi/cross-sectoral, which became a key to our solution development.

Recommended link

"Multi/cross-sectoral" means 3 sectors: governance, nonprofit and business, which defines our 4 main target groups (in our content "nonprofit" means 2 groups: NGOs and active citizens). General profile of users: gender balanced, 14- 40 years old, basic digital literacy.

Understanding needs and pilot participation of the nonprofit sector we occur through “Active Citizens” program, which includes original 5-days seminar with local citizens and further support of their initiatives. 84 NGOs from all regions of Ukraine used our solution for their activities in the program, which helped to train 35,000 citizens, support their 900 local social projects and benefit at least 90,000 citizens from different communities, incl. outside of the Internet.

Governance sector: in 2018 Government included training of civil servants and local officials according SI as a part of their Action Plan. It provided us with very important feedback of this target group during pilot e-learning, and help to design further research and key-messages for successful intervention. Now 64 local authorities from 21 regions (about 1 million residents) started pilot implementation of SI to address their needs, and help us to study their local business for the next step.

Recommended links: needs, preparation, video

SI prototype is a website with responsive web design, available for users on the most gadgets, and with geotags, which is also important for further development with AR technology. SI helps to address a wide range of local issues and global challenges on the basis of more effective cross-sectoral interactions with citizens participation. There are 3 main freedoms in its basis: free access to define issues, address them and support their solutions in a common environment by people, local authorities, nonprofits and business. Brief review of our way can help with better understanding how it works.

In 2015 Ukrainian network “Active Citizens” (AC) started to address fragmentation between people with the help of original seminars for citizens. Primarily, they used solutions like Google Maps, etc for community mapping. It was good for visualization, but lack of interactive tools demonstrated low effectiveness to overcome fragmentation among people, which was their main task. Besides that local issues had no links with proposed solutions, which created a gap between real need and often perceived problems/solutions in communities. So first, we’ve improved this technique with IT-tool for linking proposed solutions with the local issues, which they plan to address, online on the map. It allowed anybody to react on defined local issues with own proposal as well as to choose and support the best of them. It helped AC to solve fragmentation in more effective way with involving different actors like volunteers, NGOs, public authorities and business.

Test during a massive snowstorm helped people outside Internet and demonstrated more productiveness and cost effectiveness of the SI than other available options, as well as raising trust, cooperation and social capital. One of the reasons: SI was realized as a common IT-environment for different actors and citizens, which simplified their interactions and allows addressing issues for lower cost.

This finding was used for the SI development as a multi-sectoral and multi functional solution, where every IT-tool is like a puzzle. People can use them apart or combine into services they need, all SI basic functionality is free of charge. Further developing design, AR and gamification will help end users to have more fun and enjoy it.

Recommended link: SI description with pics and links for details, incl SI features and its contribution to SDGs and Good Government.

Please, look through recommended links for concrete details how SI is different from existing solutions, while here I’d like to highlight next:

1) SI proposes an innovative approach of barrier free multi-sectoral IT-environment to address low effective cross-sectoral cooperation, which also provides changes in regular processes of stakeholders; it provides new application of existing technology with original and innovative IT-tools to get more benefits from the advantages of this approach. So, it looks like SI should be positioned in all 3 options.

2) Among sources of this innovation in Ukraine according to Peter Drucker’s classification, I’d like to mention:

Unexpected Occurrences: Primarily SI prototype was “Civil Society app” developed to empower Civil Society after Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine with modern voting for decision-making, but turned out to be unclaimed. Unexpectedly it interested the British Council for the needs of their program, which defined first way into nonprofit sector.

Changes in perception: (country context) decentralization reform in Ukraine radically changed perception of local authorities and raised demand for SI, (global context) - digital era has a huge impact on changes of people's perception of interaction and governance, and we meet raising interest  to SI outside Ukraine.

After pilot e-learning we also found that IT-system plays an important role, but the most significant impact was changing attitude of local stakeholders and residents to their community, based on the awareness of the benefits of better cross-sectoral interaction with the help of SI.

Recommended links - Brief description of differences, differences (slides), SI features

Basic description you can find in section “What is your solution?”, below is one of the examples how it is being applied and some extras how it will be applied with AR.

“Pitching projects”. Local citizens pin local problems in SI, active citizens, NGOs (incl. Associate of local business) propose solutions to defined issues as linked projects (project connected with appropriate problems on the map) in SI, and pitch their projects to local authorities(LAs) and donors as special event. LAs and donors support winners with the help of co-financing option in SI. LAs can also use similar mechanism within budget reglament: executive bodies pitch to their city council requests for local budget based on defined issues in SI by citizens, NGOs and local businesses (“Advanced open budgeting”).

AR will be used to engage wealthy segments of users. Basic level - visualisation and creation of some beacons (here is bad, here is good, important, SOS, project, voting) in AR for different goals. For example, mechanism on the basis of AR-beacons “here is good” to support “devise and implement policies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products” (SDG8. Decent work and economic growth).

Advanced level - gamification in AR. Some types of gamification is already available in SI (like quests), and we plan to expand it by wider and exciting users interactions with beacons in AR. Finally SI will accompanies users through game levels up to local communities development with real self-governance, volunteering, charity and business.

Some evidence up to date.

- in the nonprofit sector: 80+ NGOs from all regions of Ukraine use SI for their activities within the program “Active Citizens”, which helped to train 35,000 citizens, support their 900 local social projects and benefit at least 90,000 citizens from different communities as specific significant changes and primarily evidence. Confirmation and evidence (problems, which meet their program and piloting SI to address them) you can find in the public feedback of the British Council.

-  in the governance sector: in May 2018 Government included training of civil servants and local officials according SI as a part of their Action Plan. It became very important confirmation of SI relevance to particular needs of the country and local communities. Data and results of this action plan are also available on the official website of the Ukrainian Government.

- 64 local communities from 21 regions already sent their LOIs and a lot of them started pilot implementation SI for citizens engagement in community action and democratic processes, although SI is only a working prototype (link).

Implementation is provided in accordance with the Theory of Changes and collects more data and evidence. We consider existing targets and indicators for SDGs as outcomes and metrics of expected SI contribution to SDGs, use dashboard of performance for outputs in local communities as results of input resources transformation through activities.

We believe that selected SDGs metrics will ensure their relevance, opportunity to compare results with others, be easily understandable in global society.

At this stage SI already serves 1837 unique users (NGOs, local authorities and people). Despite of interest to SI we try to slow down the rising number of users till upgrading prototype into release at least with UI/UX design.

Upgrading will remove tech barrier for mass engagement of users in accordance with local communities plans to cover their inhabitants. There are already 64 interested local communities with about 1 million population, and we have grounds to expect their rising at least in 4 times after upgrading and information campaign. So, our estimated goal is 1 million users in one year.

Interest outside Ukraine to SI (just AC program connects 68 countries), its further gamification and AR development should allow to reach at least 10 millions users in the forefront of identifying problems and building effective solutions to address them on the basis of more effective multi/cross/sectoral interactions with the help of SI.

It is a good point to state that MIT Solve 2019 Global Challenges grant (in the case of our success) will be used for SI upgrading and remove tech barrier for benefits millions of people.

So, we have mentioned goals for rising users in 1 and 5 years, on the other hand we have expected outputs and outcomes of the SI contribution to the SDGs, and such set will describe our progress with positive and transformational impact on millions of lives.

What is important to add. The nature of our solution (multi/cross sectoral interactions with citizens engagement) has more flexibility for implementation than monosectoral solutions. For example, it is hard “to sell solutions for democracy” in countries with authoritarian regime, and such attempt can meet with resistance, conflicts etc; the same is for strong differences in culture etc. SI scaling allows to take into account local specifics and favorable factors in governance sector, nonprofit sector and entertainment (or at least one of them) to design effective strategy in every particular country based on their features and to achieve expected level of positive impact on millions of lives.

Finally let’s imagine general picture of the process in 5 years: gamification will provide direct engagement of users worldwide to SI space in AR ((and simplified in 2D), where nonprofits, authorities and business will provide their connection with real world and users participation in identifying/addressing local issues and global challenges through self-government, volunteering etc aimed at social inclusion and shared prosperity.

1 year:

1. Access to people in poverty, which usually can be out of direct access through digital tools.

2. Political risks. President and Parliament election in 2019 will change the Government, which is our partner.

3. Warming up a military conflict with direct negative impact/seizure of local communities territories (now Ukraine has a military conflict in 2 east regions along the border with Russia).

4. Raising resistance for implementation transparency, open budgeting and other changes by local authorities due to corruption/fraud of some of their officials.

5. Mentioned IT risks (absence of UI/UX design on existing IT-prototype, and other tech issues), which can make barriers for wide citizens engagement, stable work etc.

6. Fragmentation with other existing LAs’ systems like e-Gov, Smart City etc

7. Implementation of innovations may cause more misunderstanding of participants then usual, which will have a negative impact.

In 5 years we expect some extra hurdles like countries with authoritarian regimes, financial and marketing issues to scale up, some legal issues for global transactions within nonprofit legislation, etc.

1. It was one of the main reasons to design ways through local actors, and we included in our action plan local authorities and NGOs, which have direct access, serve and can deliver advantages of SI to such people.

2. SI addresses challenges defined in policy papers, received good records, results and good reputation to continue partnership with a new Government. On the other hand, the design of this project focused on local level to have enough distance from direct effect of both elections 2019 during the project, while local elections 2020 in Ukraine will mobilize LAs to demonstrate positive changes with the help of SI.

3. We’ve received 64 LOIs of ATCs/LAs from 21 regions of Ukraine to participate in the project. If any of them cannot participate (military conflict etc, which we cannot correct), we’ll have an opportunity to replace it/them by other communities, incl. other regions.

4. With the help of our preparation work to this project we’ve already reduced this risk and selected the most motivated LAs for this stage.

5. Upgrading SI prototype in release with UI/UX and further AR development.

6. APIs will be created, which allows any existing systems to join and benefit of SI.

7.  It was the main reason to include e-learning and “HelpDesk” service into our action plan.

We also have a plan to address barriers for specific tasks of 5 year period (on request).

We use the next structure, which is optimal for our tasks:

1. Core team includes 4 people: CEO, CTO, manager in the nonprofit sector, manager in governance sector;

2. Partners network (up to 200 legal entities): staff of NGOs, universities, local authorities, Governance, business (engage users in SI and interact with them);

3. Hired specialists/freelancers - for concrete tasks (floating number).

Vadym Georgienko, project CEO, skills & experience in the management of NGOs, social entrepreneurship, governance (Adviser to Minister), local self-governance (executive committee of city council). This diverse helped Vadim to become an architect of Smart Interactions and allows to address multi/cross-sectoral issues, while his strong leadership skills help to reach impressive results at any level;

Inna Starchikova,manager in nonprofit sector. Inna is CEO of the YC (lead organization) with proven successful experience of grant management; YC is integrated in different networks due to Inna efforts, and allows to address potential risks and challenges in nonprofit sector.

Andrii Pertsukh, CTO of IT-part of the project with key skills and proven successful experience in cybersecurity, System Architect, Software Architect, retail banking and financial services leadership/staff management, which allows to define and address any risks and challenges with IT-part of the project.

Ludmila Levykh (co-founder of SI online course), manager in governmental sector. Ludmila is the chairperson of the NGO “Youth Corporation”, and their NGO was included into the Government Action Plan as co-performer for civil servants training according SI online course. She is also trained and certified as Master Facilitator in citizens activation by the British Council with proven successful experience. Her experience and skills allow to address risks and challenges in governmental sector.

This is gender balanced team with established effective communication, while their skills, background and experience create unique combination and position to deliver the solution and solve the problem in the most effective way.

- 64 local authorities from 21 regions of Ukraine.

- Government. SI was included in Governmental Action Plan, which is important to draw the attention of national stakeholders to our findings during 1st year as well as to unlock communities in Ukraine, and use existing channels in the governmental sector to share it outside Ukraine.

- NGO “Youth Corporation” - provider of the SI online course, included in Governmental Action Plan, its chairperson is in the core of the project's team.

- association “Active Citizens” with 80+ partners and 200+ trained facilitators in every region of Ukraine (already use SI). During the first year we plan to engage trained and certified facilitators of this network into activities with interested communities.

- British Council in Ukraine. Although our team never had their grants, our cooperation within program “Active Citizens” provided a number of very important  non-financial advantages for both sides.

SI model canvas as nonprofit solution was optimized to the current stage (prototype). In particular, it was empowered with the help of “smart distribution” of duties among core team and partners, where partners became an important “layer” of the team (described in the previous sections), responsible for promoting and piloting in their target audiences and most parts of model canvas (key resources, stakeholders, key-activities, intervention, channels, segments, value proposition). Partners receive their revenue as financial benefits (for example, more taxes to local budgets) and non financial benefits (transparency-trust-social capital) and  addressing their needs. Free access to define, address and solve local issues and global challenges at local level, unlocking local resources and participation in community development are some of the important values for people.

“Smart distribution” helps to minimize “cost structure” covered by our partner in Ukraine and lead organization - foundation "Moloda gromada", while SI development occurs due to the attraction of grant funds by partners. This model helps to save SI free of charge for users, incl. partners, which in turn simplifies their tasks for promoting and piloting.  

In section about our goals during the next five years you can find general picture and there are 2 notes about our path to:

1. In accordance with a specific of our solution we plan to use primarily model up to “Growth” stage. After removing tech barriers for users engagement through SI upgrading and reaching about 1 million users, we plan to upgrade primarily model. We’ll save basic functionality free of charge, and add some business options to properly ensure the growing “cost structure” and SI improvement. Further development will help to provide more features of “new economy” for better social inclusion and shared prosperity.

2. Now we consider a kind of Combining models in few years perspective, and do not exclude Enhancing Models; it will be an important issue to discuss at later stages after we’ll get more data and evidence for better solution.  

Your 10,000 USD will allow to remove tech barrier and unlock wide engagement of users by upgrading SI with UI/UX design and OSM. And please, do not think that it is just a question of money: despite of different opportunities to raise local funding, our customers are very sensitive about origin of money for SI development, and connection not just to criminal, but also to local politicians and any risks of further manipulations etc can have negative impact. So, 10,000 USD of Solve is very good and acceptable source for SI development. We’ll also try our chance for access to significant additional prize funding.

We are also very interested in well preparing to the next stages and will appreciate your help for partnerships to accelerate our work, validate impact and model, and scale our solution.

Finally, we’ll be glad to become a part of Solve network, share our knowledge, support others and find new opportunities for cooperation.

Everything was selected but needs in some specification later, for example what do you mean by "Talent or board members".

We are interested to support with SI some international programs of big international organizations like the UN agencies, USAID, the European Commission etc in any country. It should help them to get more benefits according their KPIs as well as better understanding of the SI advantages for using in other countries of their interests, which can have a big impact on acceleration of our solution and corresponds with our interests for scaling.

We are also interested to establish partnership with other networks and private foundations on the same basis.

We'll be ready to establish contacts with national regional NGOs/networks as local providers of knowledge through e-learning with the help of our online course.

We'll be interested to expand network of local NGOs and authorities to empower their activities with the help of SI.

In fact multi/cross sectoral solution is open for partnership in all 3 sectors, and this list can be continued.

At the same time it is clear that every stage will have own priorities for partnerships, so it'll be great to establish them in right time.

A number of applications to this Call can have a strong impact on AI development at their current stage and may deserve on the AI Innovations Prize, and we recommend you to consider our proposal just if you are interested to develop Global Governance with AI in the future.

We are not already using AI in SI at this stage, and believe it will be necessary during and after scaling stage. The most global challenges starts at local level, and successful SI covering of local communities globally will generate big data to the needs of the UN, Global Governance and other tasks with the help of AI.

The AI Innovations Prize will be very useful to prepare to this goal with the help of special independent research with findings best ways of further AI integration in SI and for creation appropriate specification or at least its draft or framework as well as to address mentioned barriers at this stage.

While AI is an issue of the future, fostering prosperity and social mobility for underrepresented community members is what we did and plan to do with all partners. ISOC defined our initiative as one of the best worldwide for community development with the help of the Internet. You can also find descriptions and links to previous offline and online activities with this target groups within the program “Active Citizens” in our application form.

Our team will utilize the GM Prize for unlocking new opportunities of fostering prosperity and social mobility for underrepresented community members with the help of SI during pilot in 6 local communities and further expanding across communities. In particular, through upgrading SI, e-learning, upgrading local procedures/policies and practices on the basis of SI and offline activities (detailed action plan will be sent on request). We have already established partnerships (incl. signed documents) with interested selected local authorities in different regions of Ukraine to minimize risks and ensure successful realization, and SI can be one of the 2 best choices for the GM Prize on Community-Driven Innovation.

2 women with confident positions about girls/women issues ensure gender balance of our core team and appropriate priorities for SI. In particular, SI contribution into SDG5 (Gender equality) is one of our key criteria for assessment of SI impact. In particular, 5.5. Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life. 5.B. Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women. 5.C. Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.

According existing cases SI helps to remove barriers for women and girls in publicizing their real-world problems and initiating special programs to solve them in various ways - with funding from local budget, donors, crowdfunding or business. SI can help to remove barriers for women and girls in decision-making and have high potential to unlock for them new opportunities on the basis of more effective multi/cross sectoral interactions with citizens participation, described in our application.

So, our plan for Women Prize is further unlocking their possibilities through upgrading SI, local procedures/policies and practice in selected pilot communities with further expanding to improve the quality of life for women and girls, advance their needs, and promote a world where women’s voices can be celebrated.

Some IPO (internal displaced people) organizations are members of the “Active Citizens” network, which is one of our main partners in Ukraine. After the war conflict in the East of Ukraine we’ve received an important case of using SI for IPO with the help of these organizations. First of all for their peaceful inclusion within their host communities and different kinds of reinforcing their self-reliance. So, we have a good understanding of the advantages of SI for IPO.

We also understand the difference between IPO and refugees, which has a number of extra challenges beginning with language. On the other hand there are a number of common characters and needs, where SI will be useful for refugees and their issues.

So, we do not pretend to the role of the only winner of the Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion, but if you are looking for one more and also new and innovative solution to address refugees’ issues on the basis of more effective multi/cross sectoral interactions, please, put your eye on our application.

Our team will utilize the prize to advance SI through its upgrading with a special focus on UI/UX for refugees, and continue our efforts for upgrading local policies/community development more open for IPO/refugees participation.

Vadim: my first big case started in the 90s with 7 kids and grew into the big international alliance, which tried to create friendly world for children and their development (partners’ video with original fragments https://youtu.be/lD63XvtoQE0). I think it was really “boldly sparking change” for that period of time in the post-soviet countries. Among other things, it gave me confidence in the importance of learning process, and also that answers to big questions can most often be found at the grassroots level. After years these findings stayed important for SI design as community-driven innovation.

SI has already provided changes “through innovation, disruption, and transformation” despite that it is only at the prototype stage. It changed attitude of local stakeholders and residents to their community, based on the awareness of the benefits of better multi/cross-sectoral interactions with the help of SI, and catalyzed reimagining of existing solutions. Its basic 3 freedoms became a kind of challenge to some existing trends and will cause their further review for more effective addressing today’s biggest challenges described by SDGs. This is what our team plan to do with the help of Morgridge Family Foundation Community-Driven Innovation Prize.

In particular our team will unlock new opportunities for people and their engagement through SI upgrading, and collecting data/evidence during pilot in selected local communities to finish the proof of concept, which is an important step for further growing and expanding globally.