ALI article for Ukrainska Pravda
Over the past six months, public trust in President V. Zelenskyy has declined from 77% to 59%; the Government has approved the “Reform Matrix for 2024”; negotiations on EU accession were officially launched at an intergovernmental conference in Luxembourg on 25 June.
What do all these events have in common? They are the result of the government officials’ actions, both in Ukraine and abroad. Moreover, these events are directly interconnected.
First, 50% of respondents to a poll conducted in May believe that the President has fulfilled a minority or none of his election promises. According to the poll, the main reasons for this failure are dishonest and incompetent people in his team, as well as the full-scale Russian invasion.
Another poll showed that public trust in the President as a person exceeds trust in the President as a social institution – 54% and 50%, respectively. Since the 2019 elections, the presidential institution has been increasingly interacting with the government and other executive authorities, so the public demand for accountability is addressed to them.
Second, in the third year of the war, Ukraine managed to bring together all of its commitments to key donors, namely the EU, the US, the IMF and the World Bank, and to identify political priorities in finance and the economy. The list of these commitments is impressive. What is not clear is how we have managed to implement reforms up to this point, how many reforms were successfully implemented in 2022 and 2023? And the issue of efficiency is the most important here. This is what our international partners are currently concerned about.
Third, despite its political readiness for enlargement, the European Union cannot ignore the principles of good governance on which it is built. One of them is adherence to EU values, and the other is effective implementation of agreements and decisions achieved. And here, citizens of many EU member states are asking themselves how effective the assistance provided to Ukraine is?
Why is all this important right now?
As we move closer to the EU, we will learn more and more rules of the game that we will have to unconditionally follow from the first day of our accession. These rules are called “better regulation,” which is a set of agreed-upon rules and regulations by which the executive authorities of EU member states address public problems.
Better regulation encompasses evidence-based policy and a transparent lawmaking process that takes into account the views of those most affected by such regulation. Evidence and voice. It sounds simple, but it is also complicated. Why? Because Ukraine is not yet ready for this.
The issue of trust in the President and the Government does not give us an understanding of why this trust is declining. What exactly is being done wrong? Is there something important that is not being done? The President’s election programme, to which sociologists refer, is de facto an irrelevant criterion for evaluation in the context of war. And there are no other criteria – the Government has not had an Action Programme since 2020. The Government has suspended the publication of its annual performance reports since 2022.
Ukraine has not yet developed a culture of public assessment of the government’s actions based on facts rather than emotional and informational background. One of the reasons for this is the lack of accountability of the executive branch. Another reason is the low informational value of government reports on what has been done. It would seem that they have produced a million drones, repaired several hundred schools, rebuilt dozens of bridges and opened new kindergartens and hospitals.
However, society still has not received answers to many sensitive questions. How much cheaper are eggs for the Ukrainian Armed Forces now? Do the soldiers have enough logistical support? How much more efficiently have taxpayers’ funds been used compared to the pre-war period and compared to 2022? To what extent are combat commanders satisfied with the quality of basic military training of the mobilised? Do the security means, in which tens of billions of hryvnias have been invested, effectively protect our borders?
The lack of answers to these questions is not only a concern for domestic consumers – our international partners have begun to ask similar questions, and they need to convince their taxpayers that the money spent has made a difference and, therefore, had an impact. That is why it is important for our partners to present a proper evidence base for such an impact. This is difficult to accomplish because the Ukrainian government is the source of information, which is not very used to reporting on efficiency. Not on the number of roads, bridges, schools or shelters but on the number of people who have been able to use this public infrastructure. On increasing efficiency of every hryvnia invested in the defence industry, civilian infrastructure or preserving the quality of human capital.
We have been watching the “Trump and Weapons” saga for almost six months but refused to honestly admit that his questions were really important because the key to winning a war is not the mere presence of weapons but their timely delivery and sufficiency to achieve decisive influence on the battlefield. Unless a miracle happens next year and our international partners once again fail to provide us with the necessary military support, the President and the Government of Ukraine will have to address the issue of the efficiency of using the funds available in the state budget in a critical time frame.
That is why the “reform matrix” is the first step towards the evidence-based policy that taxpayers in the EU and the US value. The citizens of Ukraine should soon appreciate it, changing the question from “How will the Government manage to implement more than 200 reforms in 2024?” to “What specific results and for whom should each of the reforms implemented in 2024 bring?”
After all, while Ukrainians can feel the effects of reforms somewhere and somehow, only specific numbers will be obvious for more than 700 million taxpayers in the EU and the US. Not “how many children went to school and how many teachers taught them”, but “how much the skills and knowledge of Ukrainian schoolchildren have increased according to PISA”. Not “how many veterans have been treated in hospitals”, but “how many veterans have returned to full working life”? Not “how many square kilometres have been de-occupied”, but “how many lives of military personnel have been saved thanks to Western weapons in a particular section of the frontline”?
What needs to be done now?
If we are moving towards a pool of countries where voters are accustomed to getting answers to complex questions, then the public administration system (including local governments) needs to switch to the “European rails”. What does it mean?
- To resume the Government’s reporting on its political priorities, sectoral strategies and action plans, and to cover this in a daily “telethon”. After that, society will better understand what the Government is doing and for whom.
- To introduce the practice of publishing regular analyses of the efficiency of government policiesrather than a chronology of trips and events. This way, budget resources will be allocated to the best and most effective politicians and policy areas.
- To voluntarily join the EU’s better regulation instruments, i.e., with appropriate assessments of government decisions (before and after the introduction of the relevant regulatory instruments). Then, we will be able to go through the negotiation process with the maximum benefit for society and business.
