Smart Interactions

Vadym Georgiienko, 1968, Ukraine, social entrepreneur. Magistr (Master) degree of Governance (PA), extra certificates in management of NGOs, business-administration and social entrepreneurship; 5 weeks fellowships in the UK (JSF in good governance, social justice and Rule of Law), 3 weeks fellowships in the USA (IVLP, Tech Entrepreneurship). Experience in local self-government (Award of the Council of Europe for the best results among 47 European countries in nomination “Youth participation and Good Governance), national governance (Adviser to Minister), social entrepreneurship (Laureate “Social Entrepreneur of Ukraine – 2005” by Schwab Foundation), NGOs and development of IT-tools (Award of the International TechForum in Riga). Multi-sectoral experience and knowledge was useful for cross-sectoral issues (trainer at national and international TechCamps by the USdep), and launching original "Smart Interactions" initiative.

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.

Smart Interactions (SI) 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 SI 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 I’ve participated since its launching at the Global Summit in Africa. Studying SDGs process detects some types of fragmentation as  barriers 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 design and development.

Recommended link

SI includes activities to drive interactions (SI-initiative) and friendly environment (SI-space) for interactions. Unlike regular e-Gov/e-Dem SI-space is a common multi sectoral virtual space of community to simplify interactions within and between sectors, sectors and citizens. Main idea: less barriers - easy to interact and address issues for lower cost. So, instead of one-dimension-relationships like “government - citizen” SI-space provides with full 3-dimensions (sectors) environment. SI-space is based on simple matrix: 3 sectors (target groups) and 3 basic roles (TroubleHunters, Social Entrepreneurs, Social Investors) for every sector. SI-matrix is useful for  mapping different IT-tools, monitoring gaps in communities basic roles, and design solutions to override these gaps. SI-space is scalable from local to regional-national-global level, which is very important character for further plans. We have working IT-prototype of SI-space - a website with responsive web design, available for users on the most gadgets, which allowed to pilot how it works for different tasks. For example, SOS-case (using SI in rescue operations), “Active Citizens” case (SI for the needs of nonprofit sector), "Co-governance" case (SI for local self-governments with impressive results during creation local budgets 2020). SI helps to contribute into SDGs from community level and up.

I`ll try to explain by example of the nearest "Co-governance case" (01.09.19 - 30.04.20). 64 local authorities (from 21 regions of Ukraine, about 1 million people) applied for pilot implementation of SI in their communities; 6 of them (not big and mostly rural) were selected to work directly meaningfully improve. Our team trained a group of local partners, which provided us with basic information (communities "passports" with the main stat and local context, and detailed portraits of target groups and needs); indicators of success were discussed together - most of them can be measured online in real time. Then our team had visits to every community to get better vision of local context and to assist with pilot running SI. 

To provide opportunities for all people we studied needs of every target groups, incl. IDP, minorities, girls/women, persons with disabilities; most often problems - low transparency, low trust, a gap between people and their access to decision making. As a result communities increased significantly level of transparency, trust and citizens/actors participation in creation local budgets 2020. Totally 86,140 people (population of these communities) benefited from provided changes, while upgrading local procedures to SI ensured sustainability of changes.

SI can be useful for all of these dimensions. 1.SI-space ensures equal access of every sector to community development, while SI-initiative ensures access of people with and without Internet. 2.Most of SDGs has local roots, SI-space has necessary tools to define issues, propose and support solutions on collaboration basis, while SI-initiative includes upgrading local procedures and driving actions to solve them. 3.Better transparency and free access to full and multisectoral view on community issues within SI-space are very important for better understanding, while engaging into actions within 3 basic roles (SI-initiative) is important for changing people attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. 

This story began from the Revolution of Dignity (RD) in Ukraine in 2014. Millions of people felt their civic responsibility for their country and tried to do their best to improve it, and I was one of them. RD inspired me to review existed approaches and develop an original system. I had so many new and original ideas at the time that I had the feeling that I would explode. Another RD advantage saved me from the explosion - RD helped to connect people from different areas with similar attitude. I met on-line with some cute IT-professionals, and inspired them to make their in-kind into prototyping of my ideas as "SI-space" (first name - Civil Society app). As for "SI-initiative" I've already had partners for  from my previous activities, first of all foundation "Young Community" and NGO "Youth Corporation". In 2015 ISOC (global organisation) selected SI as one of the best initiative world wide for community development with the help of the Internet and provided first small support. It added context of global demand and inspired all partners for a long work. 

I was one from millions of people, who felt their civic responsibility for their country during RD in Ukraine. On the other hand, I think that roots of my motivation are in my childhood and parenting in my family. When I was 10 years old I've founded my first organisation of good boys to defend girls from bad boys, organised members'trainings to develop skills, designed logo/slogans, shared cases etc. I don't remember that anybody explained me how to do it, or motivate somehow. 

After USSR collapse, families met with challenge of children development, and I simply tried to help them in my 20s. Then their number increased to 50,000, and in 2005 I became a Laureate “Social Entrepreneur (SE) of Ukraine”. But knowledge what is SE I received only in 2012 after e-learning on Coursera. Similar with governance - in 2007 I've received the Award of the CoE in Good Governance, but only in 2008 started my formal education in governance. 

So, I think that SE in my case is a kind of people's type, who meet with something bad, and try to change it with a participation/support of people interested to improve life of themselves and around.

- Multi-sectoral experience and knowledge (governance, nonprofit, business).

- Leadership and experience of successful management from start up stage to the big international project. 

- SE-mentality aimed at improvement of the world and people lives.

- Innovator. This is a creative part of me, and it is useful, when project meets with issues, which needs "to go outside" and/or develop original solutions. Its back side is an advantage for my uniquely position and risk to deliver the project at the same time: at this stage only me as SI developer have the best understanding of SI potential and ways of its realisation. I try to do my best to expand it, and this is one of the reason for me to apply now.

- Existing team, partners and network around, thanks to whom I have the opportunity to make changes.  

Since September 2019 our team has realized SI pilot implementation in selected local communities of 6 regions with a support of the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ukraine. In February 2020 six regional conferences have been conducted  in these regions to present and discuss interim results; we planned to provide the first national SI conference in April in Kyiv (capital of Ukraine) with national stakeholders and regional actors. It was very important activity for Outcome 2 of the project «Strengthening capacity for further scaling».

This planned event was destroyed by unexpected coronavirus with quarantine and self-isolation. Most of the team, partners and potential participants were very sad and disappointed: they worked hard during a half of the year to generate «a wave of interest to SI» from community through regional to national level, and they cannot «froze» this wave till the indefinite in time end of quarantine.

Instead of efforts to harm reduction I proposed to transform obstacles into opportunities. In particular, (1) to promote SI as useful IT-solution for 3 sectors and people in self-isolation to be heard and to participate in decision making and (2) organize wide national web-conference, which became very successful (some details in the next section).

1. Mentioned problem was complicated by the fact that donor refused to support national web-conference instead of planned off-line conference within supported project. So, I had to take leadership and convinced the team and partners to organize and conduct 2-days web-conference without donor support as in-kind of interested actors. Finally about 400 representatives of NGOs, local authorities, Universities, business from all regions of Ukraine applied, participated up to 7 hours per day and created together some imported docs and proposed SI as a system architecture for the new National Strategy for Civil Society.

2. I have many other cases, when I used active leadership to address challenges. However, I prefer «soft leadership» - when I create and support friendly environment, which allows a lot of other leaders to take leadership and responsibilities. For example, «Soft leadership» helped me to engage about 100,000 young people in Good Governance (mentioned CoE Award) to strengthen young people's faith in themselves and their ability to influence the world, which captured their hearts and minds. «Soft leadership» is useful for expanding «Smart Interactions» now.

Unlike regular e-Gov/e-Dem SI-space is a common multi sectoral virtual space of community to simplify interactions within and between sectors, sectors and citizens. Main idea: less barriers - easy to interact and address issues for lower cost. So, instead of one-dimension-relationships like “government - citizen” SI-space provides with full 3-dimensions (sectors) environment. SI-space is based on simple matrix described in section «What is your project?». So far as our materials and web-site is in Ukrainian language, I did some extra notes for you, which are available within «If you have a website describing your project, provide a link here».

SI was also different from regular narrow services focused on one problem. It made a number of difficulties, till I have proposed to consider SI as a kind of new system architecture (like operating system in ICT) for local communities, easy scalable to regional-national-global level. It was one of the main messages of my key-speech at the mentioned national web-conference, and participants from 3 sectors accepted it in their final doc. So, I believe that SI-space as new system architecture based on barrier free common multi sectoral spaces can unlock new opportunities to address local issues and global challenges, which has not been feasible before, and it makes SI-space innovative. Our nearest pilot results provide us with first data and evidence.

At the same time SI-initiative generates some innovative «know how» to provide changes.

Logical framework is an integral part of our work, while data of pilots, regular feedback of local actors and citizens are very useful to illustrate links as well as to improve SI at this stage. I`ll be glad to prepare all necessary information in English and share with you on your request, now I`d like to use this space to remind about a component, which usually remains behind the scenes of logic framework, but is very important for success.

I mean «balance of forces» that hold the situation. First of all, «balance of forces» analysis is important for developing strategy and action plan to bring the situation that we want to change out of balance. Secondly, without creation of new balance of forces, which will hold changed situation at the final point, we are likely to face a big risk of a rollback to the previous situation, which was provided by the previous balance of forces. In other words, provided changes can fail despite of achieved indicators, outcomes and created outputs.

Data of «balance of forces» can be used for logical frame, and it is good to have it as a separate doc for the stages, when «balance of forces» plays a vital role.

About 100,000 people are benefited by SI in pilot local communities. We expect 500,000 people in one year, and at least 10,000,000 people in 5 years.

At the beginning I created SI-strategy with the main period slots from developing concept to global scaling (SI-strategy is available on a link in "If you have a website describing your project, provide a link here". 

Now we are at the end of the piloting of a prototype of SI-space. Our team is going to unlock wide engagement of citizens/actors through upgrading prototype to stable release and other activities within the next year. We plan to develop opportunities for SI intervention through any sector (governance, nonprofit, business and/or their combination) with the help of some innovations, which should simplify SI-scaling in the most of the countries/societies within the next five years. We expect social good as SI-contributions to concrete targets/indicators of SDGs. So, our expected impact goals are: 1) changes of people's behavior on the basis of recognition of the benefits of more effective collaboration, 2) achievement of SDGs on the basis of the mentioned changes of people's  behavior.

Local institutions adopted their policies/regulations to SI in pilot communities, and now we have necessary docs' templates to simplify joining SI by any other interested communities. At the same time a number of limitations of SI-prototype is the main tech barrier, which does not allow local communities to provide wide engagement of citizens/actors in the next year. Success of addressing tech (and some other) issues will depend from overcoming "financial barrier" - this pilot stage is separated from the vitality phase by few important steps. 

On the other hand, our doc's templates and main processes were designed within Ukrainian legislation, and scaling globally can meet with some legal barriers in the next five years.

Usually changes of people's behavior, changes of communities, good governance and other serious changes requires significantly more time than, for example, upgrading prototype. It is important cultural factor for planning, while lack of trust, fragmentation of local groups, gap between authorities etc defines a cultural barrier to accomplish our goals with the help of SI-space. It highlights importance of another SI-part — SI-initiative.

See the Partnership Opportunities section

There is an informal network around SI, which includes NGOs, local authorities and active citizens. For example, foundation "Young Community" (YC) helps with coordination with other network members and with other networks in Ukraine (YC is associated member of the Ukrainian Philanthropists Forum, member of the network "Active citizens" and some other) and outside Ukraine (international network of the GFCF); YC has also very good experience at the grant market, and supports SI-development within different projects. NGO "Youth Corporation" developed full SI on-line course with components for citizens, authorities and NGOs, and support free e-learning with the help of engaged volunteers. Totally there are more than 100 other NGOs, which are SI users.

6  local authorities (LAs) from different regions are the core for SI-testing and pilot SI-implementation, they also provide important feedback and data; there are also a number of other LAs, which joined SI from the early stage (e-learning).

Finally, the Ukrainian Government. YC and NGO "Youth Corporation" became co-performer of the national strategy for Civil Society in Ukraine within annual governmental action plans (as their in-kind) and support communication with government bodies.

There is no business model at the pilot/testing stage - SI supported by foundation "Young Community"

Briefly: sustainability of the first period slots of SI-strategy is provided with the helps of grants; we are going to save the core functionality for local communities free of charge, and develop extra business options for SI sustainability after first period slots.

SI is not revenue generating project at this stage

See the prize section

About USD150,000

Tech barriers. Prototype of SI-space with full functionality should be upgraded in the next year to unlock opportunity of wide engagement of citizens/actors and strengthening sustainability of the project ($50,000, grant). Additionally we consider small app with AR-option with simple and specified functionality for concrete role (for example, TroubleHunter), which can be connected with SI-space and other external solutions ($40,000, grant). 6 months.

Cultural barriers. After overcoming tech barriers we should continue SI-initiative within the next 3 directions:

1) further development of SI implementation in pilot communities to receive data/evidence for expected medium/long term results and impact. It is also an area for testing new and original methodologies and «sales strategies» for engagement in collaboration and other tasks;

2) expanding SI across Ukraine on the basis of developed tools, methodologies, templates, network, development networking, multi-level interactions etc;

3) scaling SI outside Ukraine. We`ll need in better understanding of local context and cultural barriers in every concrete country. We should develop international contacts, provide smart informational campaigns, international networking, build a coalition of interested stakeholders and actors around SI. We should have developed flexibility for SI-intervention through any sector at this stage.

Legal barriers. It is not a problem for stages in Ukraine, and we expect this barrier at the stage of scaling outside Ukraine. SI was created under nonprofit legislation, which should simplify scaling in countries with nonprofit/charity legislation, but will need in findings/recommendations for every concrete country.

Any support of these needs is very welcomed.

SI is an initiative for social good, which is open for anybody, who is interested to use SI for thier goals (individual or social). We promote the principle of «added value» to SI by any partner. So, I indicate all types of support, which can add value to SI. Needs in concrete type of support will depend from the concrete stage and directions, which I tried to explain in previous section. For example, financial support for SI upgrading is already welcomed, legal support for global scaling will be welcomed at appropriate stage and so on. Our team is open to discuss any proposal of support in details.

At the «Ukrainian» stage we`ve established a partnership with authorities, as we use a strategy of SI-intervention through the governance sector here. We also plan to develop partnership with NGOs and business associations.

We hope to develop partnership with the UN agencies and international programs/donors, and enforce their programs/activities with the help of SI. It should also help to simplify scaling outside Ukraine.

Our team is open to discuss any proposal for partnership, which can add value to the concrete stage of SI development