How open data helps Ukrainians navigate times of war

A chatbot for finding the nearest air-raid shelter, an app for internally displaced persons seeking employment, and a digital tool to boost agricultural resilience by providing information on pesticides, plants and soil, these are just some examples of how open data is helping millions of Ukrainians navigate their day-to-day lives during this time of war.

These digital solutions are part of the ‘Open Data Unbroken’ programme, launched by the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities in May 2023 and implemented with the support of SocialBoost and 1991 Accelerator and in collaboration with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation.

Open data is data that is accessible, editable, and usable by anyone. The programme provided financial and mentorship support for citizens to use open data to create grassroots solutions for consequences of the war against Ukraine. The result has been tools that are now helping to combat corruption, increase transparency, foster economic growth, and build a more democratic society.

Empowering displaced individuals with open data

When the war began, Sergiy and Dmytro Sergeev had to flee Mariupol, a city in South-Eastern Ukraine, and found themselves facing a challenge shared by many others: unemployment. These two entrepreneurial brothers saw a need and decided to fill it by repurposing their creation, the “Nazar City Bot” chatbot, to assist internally displaced persons in finding jobs.

“Having to flee Mariupol gave us a unique opportunity to view the project through a new lens,” the Seergev brothers said. “The situation, although challenging, allowed us to identify strengths and weaknesses of the chatbot and map out new opportunities and perspectives for development.”

The “Nazar City Bot” chatbot was originally created in 2018 in collaboration with the Mariupol city administrators as a way to use open data from the municipality to automatically notify residents about municipal utility plans and emergency repairs. With the chatbot’s success in Mariupol, other Ukrainian cities soon adopted the app.

Today, the chatbot is serving a new purpose. It now offers over 8,000 users access to more than 5,000 services related to employment and government services. It is using open data on job vacancies from the State Employment Service of Ukraine to provide internally displaced persons with an easy and automatic way to search for jobs. One latest function is also helping internally displaced persons from Mariupol more easily access government compensation for destruction of their homes.

With thousands of people accessing job opportunities and vital services through the chatbot, the bot has played an important role in fostering economic well-being and building Ukrainians’ self-sufficiency in times of crisis.

Enhancing safety with open data

When the air raids started, finding secure shelter became a paramount concern for every Ukrainian. However, according to an audit ordered by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in June 2023, many shelters had problems like accessibility and suitability. It dawned on Konstantin Homma and his tech team that not only do people need to find nearby shelters, but there needed to be a way to report issues to government bodies for proper shelter maintenance. This is how ‘Where is Shelter?’ was created.

‘Where is Shelter?’ is a chatbot that is now helping thousands of Ukrainians find safe shelter and report issues to the government to help maintain the shelters’ quality. While today, the bot is experiencing remarkable growth, one of the pivotal moments in developing the bot was getting sufficient data from open government data portals.

The scattered local data across different locations made it hard to compile all the shelter locations, but Konstantin and his team were able to solve this by aggregating, refining, and structuring data on 56,000 registered civil protection facilities across Ukraine. The resulting high-quality data served as a catalyst for enhancing the chatbot's core functionalities, including adding an AI-driven address search.

A key to the chatbot’s success is Konstantin and his team’s extensive experience building digital solutions for keeping citizens informed. When the COVID pandemic first broke out and information flow to citizens was critical, Konstantin and his company, Shrtct. Agency, built a chatbot with the Ukrainian Ministry of Health to provide more than 1.4 million Ukrainians with reliable information during the turbulent pandemic times. This experience allowed Konstantin and his team to quickly shift gears to creating digital solutions to help Ukrainians after the war broke out.

Today, the ‘Where is Shelter?’ chatbot has over one thousand new users joining daily, generating more than a thousand search queries and 20-40 daily reports. While the chatbot best serving the people seeking safe shelter continues to be their top priority, the team is now working toward a major milestone to publish the created dataset on the National Open Data Portal.

“We're eager to share the dataset with a broader audience, including fellow developers and NGOs facing similar challenges. Our goal is to unlock the full potential of open data related to shelters,” said Konstantin, who is working with the Ministry of Digital Transformation to publish the dataset on the Ministry’s official portal.

Cultivating agriculture with open data

The consequences of war on agriculture in Ukraine have not only jeopardized livelihoods, but also the very food sources many people rely on. As an Associate Professor of Horticulture at the National University in Uman, Oleksandr Solsky knows this all too well. That’s why Oleksander and his team set out to expand their digital portal, ‘Agrarians Together’, to support hundreds of thousands of agronomists, gardeners, and farmers in Ukraine with building a more resilient agriculture sector.

‘Agrarians Together’ was launched as a tool for farmers in decision-making in the selection of plant varieties, plant protection systems pesticides, and fertilizers calculations, but as the environmental destruction of the war has continued, optimizing agricultural practices has become more critical.

Using open data on agriculture from the government, Oleksander and his team created the ‘Pesticides under control’ information aggregator, which offers comprehensive information on pesticides and agrochemicals authorized for use in Ukraine. They also added a ‘Plant Varieties’ aggregator, which assists farmers in selecting the best plant varieties based on various parameters, while also offering agricultural calculators to aid in determining seed requirements, adjusting agricultural machinery, and selecting pesticides and agrochemicals.

Together, the resources provided by ‘Agrarians Together’ are helping to make decision-making in the agriculture sector faster, more efficient, and accurate for farmers across Ukraine.

Open data impact

The 'Open Data Unbroken' programme has provided essential financial and mentorship support for grassroots initiatives using open data to address urgent challenges arising from war. Support for Ukrainians by Ukrainians was key to the success of the programme, as it empowered locals to create tangible solutions to everyday challenges faced by themselves, their neighbors, families, and communities.

The programme aided its participants in developing projects, enhancing their capacity to innovate, and maximizing the impact of open data. As one of the programme mentors emphasized, “It's not enough to just throw data out there and see what sticks. The data has to make sense; it must be useful and easily understandable.” Open data holds value and generates impact when utilized as a resource for NGOs, entrepreneurs, and businesses to create new products and services, even during times of crisis. Participants in this OSCE programme have ultimately illustrated how open data can elevate transparency in governance, improve accessibility to government services, facilitate informed decision-making, and empower citizens affected by war.