Public Governance Review of Ukraine

Executive summary

Ukraine's governance system has demonstrated extraordinary resilience in the face of Russia's war of aggression, which, since February 2022, has caused more than 15,000 civilian casualties, displaced nearly 6 million citizens abroad, and inflicted direct damage exceeding USD 170 billion. Despite these pressures, Ukraine has maintained functioning institutions, continued implementing public administration reforms and regulations, and advanced its EU accession agenda. Yet, the war has deepened structural vulnerabilities, eroding public trust, straining fiscal capacity, and widening gaps in strategic co-ordination, that sustained governance reform must address.

Building resilience into Ukraine's governance

Ukraine's government has shown remarkable capacity to absorb wartime shocks while maintaining core functions and delivering for citizens. The Diia digital platform, Ukraine's flagship government app providing access to over 150 public services, has over 20 million registered users, and 84% of e-government service users reported a very positive experience in 2024. The vast majority of actions under Ukraine's Public Administration Reform Strategy were completed in 2024, including the expansion of administrative service centres (ASCs) and the digitalisation of key public services through the Diia platform. However, wartime pressures continue to strain institutional capacity, including through staff losses, fiscal reorientation toward defence, and constraints on transparency under martial law. Looking ahead, sustaining the resilience of Ukraine's governance will require embedding agility and human-centred service delivery into the next reform cycle, ensuring that martial-law restrictions are applied proportionately and reversed once conditions allow, and investing in accountability and citizen engagement as the foundations of renewed public trust.

This review examines five priority areas, selected in agreement with the Government of Ukraine, where governance reform can turn that resilience into lasting institutional strength: strategic planning, information integrity, citizen participation, the civil service, and artificial intelligence in government. For each area, this executive summary sets out high-level reform directions; more detailed, sequenced, and operationally specific recommendations, structured around immediate priorities, recovery and reconstruction measures, and long-term development actions, are set out in the respective chapters.

Strengthening planning for Ukraine’s recovery and long-term goals

Effective strategic planning is a prerequisite for Ukraine's recovery: without it, reconstruction risks being fragmented, donor-driven, and disconnected from the country's long-term development ambitions. Ukraine has demonstrated commitment to building a more coherent planning system, and important foundations are in place. However, institutional responsibilities remain blurred, planning documents lack a clear order of priority, and the links between strategy, budgeting, and performance are underdeveloped. Strengthening these connections is essential if Ukraine is to translate its political commitments into funded, accountable action, and to ensure that recovery serves as a springboard for long-term reform rather than a temporary fix.

Ukraine could consider:

• Clarifying institutional leadership for strategic planning at the centre of government, with a clear mandate to steer priorities and ensure coherence across ministries.

• Establishing a clear order of priority among planning documents, ensuring that national objectives cascade consistently to sectoral, regional, and local levels.

• Strengthening the links between planning, budgeting, and performance monitoring to ensure strategies are fiscally grounded and results-oriented.

• Increasing transparency and public accountability over recovery planning, building on existing digital tools to track progress and engage citizens and businesses.

Reinforcing information integrity

Ukraine faces systematic information warfare as part of Russia's broader aggression, making information integrity both a national security and a democratic governance priority. Since 2014, Ukraine's World Press Freedom ranking improved from 97^th to 62^nd, Ukraine is navigating a delicate balance between national security and freedom of expression including with martial law restrictions, and financial pressures threaten independent media. Reinforcing information integrity must be grounded in democratic values and continue the country’s ongoing reforms while appreciating its unique context.

Ukraine could consider:

• Clarifying roles of institutions tackling information integrity or creating a central agency with the authority to monitor threats, co-ordinate responses, and ensure cross-sector oversight.

• Ensuring restrictions introduced under martial law are applied transparently and proportionately, with a clear post-war roadmap for restoring freedoms.

• Strengthening the financial sustainability of independent and local media through diversified domestic funding mechanisms.

• Scaling up media and information literacy programmes as part of a whole-of-society resilience approach.

Deepening citizen participation

Despite wartime pressures, Ukraine's democratic tradition and active civil society have enabled meaningful participation in public decisions, with public consultation events surpassing pre-war levels in 2024. The new Law on Public Consultations adopted in 2024 and amendments to legislative requirements for participation at the local level mark an important step but call for all levels of government to strengthen implementation capacities.

Ukraine could consider:

• Strengthening the legal and institutional foundations for participation by operationalising recent laws on public consultations and local self-government through building public sector capacity at all levels, clarifying institutional roles and responsibilities, and building a culture of participation.

• Establishing a unified, strategic approach to participation in collaboration with civil society by anchoring it in national-level priorities and whole-of-government coordination mechanisms.

• Delivering more meaningful and innovative participation opportunities to all groups of society in practice by developing a "one-stop-shop" knowledge hub, launching a cross-government digital participation platform, strengthening monitoring and accountability, diversifying methods to reach under-represented groups (e.g., internally displaced persons), and scaling deliberative democracy pilots.

Developing a future-ready civil service

Ukraine's civil servants have shown outstanding commitment throughout the war, but merit-based recruitment has been suspended, around 31 600 posts remain unfilled, and skills shortages are acute. A significant salary reform was signed into law in June 2025.

Ukraine could consider:

• Resuming merit-based, open and transparent recruitment competitions as soon as security conditions permit.

• Building a coherent, system-wide learning and development architecture under NAUCS leadership, aligned with recovery and EU integration priorities.

• Developing and deploying competency frameworks across the public service, starting at leadership level.

• Addressing demographic imbalance at senior levels, with a clear pathway toward the NAUCS goal of 40% women in senior posts by 2030.

Leveraging artificial intelligence for effective and trustworthy public services

Ukraine's advanced digital transformation, including the Diia platform and the Trembita interoperability system, provides a strong foundation for AI adoption in government. Strategic frameworks are in place, but formal AI governance remains nascent: no oversight body exists, risk assessments are not mandatory, and technical standards are absent.

Ukraine could consider:

• Establishing a permanent central co-ordination mechanism for AI in government, building on the WINWIN AI Centre of Excellence and the Chief AI Officer role.

• Operationalising ex-ante and ex-post impact assessments for AI systems, prioritising high-risk applications, and introducing requirements for algorithmic transparency and human oversight.

• Developing a Law on AI aligned with the EU AI Act, providing legal certainty for both public sector deployment and private sector innovation.

• Investing in shared digital public infrastructure to enable responsible, scalable AI adoption across government.