Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Welcome to Smart in the City, the BABLE podcast where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
[00:00:21] Tamlyn Shimizu: I am your host, Tamlyn Shimizu and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
[00:00:31] Tamlyn Shimizu: Smart in the City is brought to you by BABLE Smart Cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the BABLE platform at BABLE Smart Cities eu.
[00:00:46] Tamlyn Shimizu: So a little while ago I actually sat down with Victoria Iskovic, the CIO of Kyiv City for an exciting interview and we're continuing that and learning more about Kyiv. It was a really interesting episode, so if you didn't get the chance also I encourage you to also listen to that episode.
This episode I have the absolute honor of getting to speak to Oleg. Oleg Polovynko, Advisor to the mayor of Kyiv City on digitalization.
[00:01:15] Oleg Polovynko: Tamlyn, thank you very much for invitation. I'll be glad to have interesting conversation today with you.
[00:01:24] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, super excited to have you Oleg. So to get warmed up, we always like to start with a bit of a teaser question to get the juices flowing.
So we're actually going to do the same one that we asked Victoria because I'm interested to see your parallels.
So we asked to Victoria last time, if you had to describe Kyiv's journey with digital transformation in three emojis, which emojis would they be?
[00:01:54] Oleg Polovynko: Oh, you know, now there are some specific in our life it's military regime and we are in the war. So definitely we need protection. That's why we will be this military helmet emoji.
Basically I live in Kyiv all my life.
This is my hometown where I born. That's why this is a symbol of the love.
And the third one will be to identify is a sunset in Kyiv this small emoji around the city because the sunsets in Kyiv incredible.
And I love to see the. We have a lot of high buildings so there are many nice sunset places where you see all the city above you.
I really love city Kyiv. That's why these three emojis will be.
[00:03:00] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I'm excited to learn more about it from you also. So just interestingly so Victoria, she chose a fire emoji, an umbrella emoji and a rocket emoji so you can go back and listen to that episode and see why. But yeah, you picked different ones so that's good.
So first Off. Oleg, I would love to know more about you. You mentioned that you're from Kyiv and that's your hometown and yeah, your city. But I would love to also know a little bit more about your background. What has been your jo getting into your role today?
[00:03:40] Oleg Polovynko: I'm totally engineer mindset. Starting from my education past 20 years, I'm working in how it's called IT Sphere.
I'm entrepreneur. I had several exits from the companies where we develop the services and the products for enterprise companies. So before my starting working in the city of Kyiv, I created applications and products for different businesses.
I holded two years position of CIO of city of Kyiv, where we developed the strategy which is implemented now. And that's why I'm now advising to you mayor. Because that was the goal of the mayor when after this strategy was elected in the city of Kyiv we implemented. And my goal now is to improve it even this existing three years document. But how we can improve it, how we can implement innovations, how we went can fastly adopt new technologies. What's born around in this moment. Because we are in very fast environment. And the same time that experience what I achieved as a CIO of the Kyiv. Now I'm implementing in the products for other cities, which I'm sure needs the same experience what Kyiv had. Because Kyiv had now a unique experience.
Because we are combining as the city different regimes. We are like the capital of the fighting country where we have internal high level of security because of president, all military heads, all of them live in the Kyiv.
We passed as all world through the COVID And we had this experience.
If you know, for example, if you're operating some data center or something, you have to test it several times per year for different aspects like disaster recovery process and et cetera. Kyiv already had this test. Now every day because we have lack of electricity, the missile attacks to the electricity companies. Here is the office in front of me of one of the biggest energy company in Ukraine. And they had very nice office with glasses all around from the glass. Now it's almost fully destroyed. Half of them without glass. Because the missile one year, one and a half year ago heated, right? Not from here. And the reason was to destroy our energy infrastructure. That's why we have now experience how to operate and work without electricity for some time. For example. That's why we boosted our civil defense services and implemented for example offline maps with useful links for the citizens and etc. So all that created some unique products and unique services for what we did. But why I think that interesting for other cities, because from point of view of city council, the challenges when you have the missile attack or when you have flooding, like in Valencia, it's totally same. You have to organize, evacuation, deliver help, serve to your citizens and to your residents. And if we go through the list of the risks, what we have about increasing the temperature, the bad waste management and etc. That's all gives some action in the city, which have to be managed by the Kyiv city, by the city councils, and they are the same.
[00:08:38] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I want to get into that a little bit more. So advising on digitalization during such a transformative and very challenging period in Kyiv's history, obviously comes with very unique insights. And you started to touch on that in your last answer, but I want to dig into that a little bit more. So what have been the most significant milestones for your work over this very challenging time?
[00:09:08] Oleg Polovynko: That's a combination of two periods. Because when I started my work in Kyiv City Council, there was peaceful time. And on the first place and first goal from the mayor Vitalik Liszkov, was create convenient applications.
Because that was 2020 and there was very popular to have applications. A lot of businesses did that, a lot of new services, banking boosted in that moment, but there was no applications for the residents of the city. At the same time, the city that moment launched electronic tickets system for payment in the public transport. So we needed the applications which helps to do that user journey very convenient. And we greatly solved that task, because first millions of the users of the Kyiv digital app was the public transport users. That was the main functionality. After that we added parking, city services, notifications and et cetera. And the main approach, what we implemented that was user centric approach. Because we really changed the way how we communicated for service design and how it will be implemented.
We change this behavior and that gives us great results. Because I think that after four years operating in the city, this application has 4.7, 4.8 stars on Apple and Google stars. We have more than 85% positive feedbacks based on the polls. What we collecting through the applications, through the users and the residents. The registered residence in the city of Kyiv is 3.6 million, but at the same time we have 3.6 registration in application.
So of course we have refugees, we have guests of the city, but I think that this is best penetration rate for city applications, what can be. So we created these ecosystems. So answering to your questions, the first was the user centric approach for implementation of the services. And when inversion started in 2022, we saw that value which was not on the first place, even not on the second place. This is this direct trustable channel of communications with the residents where we can provide critical notification. Because the full scale invasion started from huge misinformation and cyber.
Cyber attack on Ukraine. So Russia manipulated in any field where they can they sending the messages through the different channels, social platforms, fake news and etc. And through all this mess was quite hardly deliver what really happened in the city.
Because the city of Kyiv in the lowest moment of attack, that when Russians was right on the border of the city.
We had less than 1 million population. So more than 2.6 million people evacuated from the city in 2, 3 weeks.
But the city continuing sleeves. This is still the capital. This is still the place for the militaries and all people who is working around. And you have to continue manage this process inclusion group of people who need special help in this moment. And this was really challengable moment for the city. And we needed communicate to the residents to understand what they need now, what's happening with them and applications. It cannot be easily attacked or manipulated. So all information which goes through the application was trustable for them. We add very fastly that services what we needed. We a little bit reinvented Google. Because Google as tech companies in the moment of inversion. They close their mapping for editing. And we needed some special channels how to communicate to people. Pharmacy, grocery. All this useful link. We make this two way communication through the applications for delivering critical notifications for safety reason. And that what we are now understood that all these personalized and critical notifications.
This is crucial because if we go through Valencia case.
I don't know if you are familiar what's happened there, but there was misinformation for all the day when the flooding started. So the weather center alerted in the morning. But the national notification came only after 10 hours.
The city level communicated through the X platform or through through other channels. So there was no organized information for the residents in Valencia More than 14%, if I'm not mistaken, foreigners who for example, don't know Spanish. The critical notification came in Spanish and you cannot copy it or translate and etc. So a lot of things shows that what I mentioned here in the beginning, that there is don't matter what's what's happening. Is it war or is it flooding? The challenge is the same how to be fastly informed, what to do, how deliver that in the right channel.
And with needed alerts. Because a lot of us now switching off any others on telephone. That's why our vision that every city authority have to have some tool like applications, but it have to be owned by the city, not by parking company or transportation company. Because that there is not know their function there they covering transportation.
But all this city care part it's needs special tools. That's what we are doing now.
[00:16:55] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I think that's really interesting how you're also applying that to other situations and trying to also inform and teach other cities about this. My question is then what? Because it's relatively easy. Well, not easy, but when people need the application, then they will download it and use it. Right. When other forms, other apps, avenues are not available with Google and everything else. Right, but how would you advise, I guess other cities to implement this now before a disaster strikes in a more proactive way? What would be your kind of lesson there?
[00:17:35] Oleg Polovynko: It's not so easy to install such applications because to be useful it has to be integrated with different existing services like parking, like transportations, like some digital lines to applying some documents, city center and et cetera, paying for utilities, voting, electronic democracy services like polls, voting inside apartments, buildings, some initiative of city changement, participatory budgeting of the cities and etc. They for example created in different websites or you have some digital line in your building. Somehow you have different elements and they have to be integrated. That's why the initiative have to be done by the city that oh, okay. We want to be in contact with our residents. We really want to understand their needs, we want to understand their vision. We want involve residents in city management. We want deliver for them open data about the city and what's happening in the city. Some kind of pulse of the city. And we want together working through this platform to make our city great, beautiful, full of events and etc.
That's created through this product because it helps involve residents. For example, in city of Kyiv, when we had petitions on web portal, there was no more than 10, 15 new petitions initiated per month.
But when we created voting for petitions in applications that delivers now millions of votes per month only because it's very easily to vote. It's easily to notify that in your in your square started this petition or these petitions is from your points of interest and et cetera, that involves citizens so they more deeply involved in what's happening, where the budgeting goes, what will be done. Because for example, previously when the city of Kyiv did partition penalty budget, that was right before the war, through the applications we created around 1000 different projects initiated by the people about security. In my Apartment building that we want to put on Crossroads several cameras for increased security level. Somebody wants to build children playground. Somebody want to make some redesign of the part. Somebody wants to make their house more energy efficient. They want to put some smart systems to manage all resources like water, gas, which used and etc. And that was initiated in the digital wave by the people. And this vote was collected through the applications. And only because of mobile and very friendly UX ui we achieved huge increase of the people. They downloaded the information about the projects, what they want to collect the votes with QR codes placed in their apartments and so on. That's what what these systems work. And this is only the base cases because it can be more wider adoption and more wider involvement.
[00:22:12] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, good point there. On involving the citizens. I want to touch on another project that I think you had your hands in, which is the Misto project. Am I saying that correctly?
[00:22:23] Oleg Polovynko: Yep.
[00:22:24] Tamlyn Shimizu: And it's described as a platform for active, comfortable and safe urban living. Can you give us insight into this, how you envision its core principles being applied also to other cities?
[00:22:40] Oleg Polovynko: Wrapping up with Kyiv Digital. So Kyiv Digital for four years like the product started working with the Kyivians and now deeply involved. But that product was created like handmade for city of Kyiv. When I stepped out from position of CIO city of Kyiv, I start thinking about this product like the platform for the cities. Because even in our case the Kyiv of city have even in the wartime have budget for civil defense services for digitalization and that's help implement solutions. But for example, other cities in Ukraine have lack of budgeting now. And but they need these services and they don't here have any other digitalizations yet. And in the worldwide the cities which around from 10,000 residents till 1 million in general don't have digital instruments. So big cities started to do that. But this medium size and small cities, they don't have such solutions. But the same site they need security and safety services like critical notifications, like useful maps like evacuation roads and etc.
Some shooting in the city and some development companies too loud at night. So all this around the safety in the city, this is one domain, what they really need.
The second one is integration of the city services. Because for example, like the quest of the city, sometime it's hardly to firstly download applications because it's not allowed for your Apple store localization and etc. You need several applications. For example, for smart mobility medium, we need 3, 5 applications per each city.
So our vision that it has to be combined by the city and Redirect guests or users to that applications. But there have to be one point of connect. And for example, for the scooters, we planning to combine several companies together showing only the point where his scooter located his charging level. And when you choose after that you are redirecting that applications which provide it to you. So this combination of smart mobility services all together and citizen engagement, it's like we call them electronic democracy services. And in addition all other services which provided from the city. Because through the first previous period of digitalization there was lack of projects in the cities. They distributed all the projects through some private companies. But in this moment they lost big part of the citizen oriented services like digital lines like security, like ordering some paper requests. For example, in many cities the parking monthly ticket you have to order in paper still.
But it's really easy to be digitalized when you just send the request. In our application, you can park your car, you can order the monthly ticket in two, three clicks. That's how it has to work. So all the points of communications or all the points of the services what you need, it's one application which covers you everything. And city just need to integrate their existing services.
[00:27:12] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really interesting.
So the digital app still exists right in parallel to Misto or how am I understanding this?
[00:27:22] Oleg Polovynko: For some services? Yes, of course it's already implemented. But we are combining all services which happening in the cities and which you need to use. For example, transportation. Because transportation this is the blood of the city. So it has to be connected. Because transportation is the part of the safety scenarios and etc. Because this now we are talking only about the user side. But the same time we deliver a lot of good services for the city administrators like data analytics, situation awareness center, geo information map which shows what's happening in the city. So on this side we have to create any kind of analytic reports which needed to city authority to make real data driven decisions, not decision. Because I think that this happening or here is in Facebook. We have some news and we have to react. No, you're really on back end. See what's happening in your city. Based on the numbers how many passengers now in Metro. If you need evacuation or some direct or something happening. So that's the part. But it's directly connected to the residence application. And that gives to create these services. When situation awareness center can directly notify residents based for example on their apartments or if some as I mentioned direct and you need close some territory of the city. You have to notify people who is inside this perimeter, what what to do delivered for them, right? Instruction. If this territory we will be floated in 3, 4 hours. Where is evacuation road, which is safety road? Or I go directly to the water, which comes ahead, you know, so this gives this magic of connection connected and trustably connected residents and city authority.
[00:30:01] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, good points. I want to ask you what is one or two of the biggest lessons that you've learned about resilience? You've shown amazing resilience in Kyiv with of course, Covid and then the Russian invasion.
What are some lessons that you want to share with the audience about resiliency?
[00:30:25] Oleg Polovynko: First of all, I learned this meaning of resilience in this moment. And I start learning it starting from the COVID And now I am really thankful to Covid that he learned us how to work remotely. Because in the moment of invasion, we are in the same way. Half or even more than half of our team was physically evacuated from the city. But they continuing work. And big part, for example of call centers, the ladies and they working from Europe. Now they continue working for the city of Kyiv, but they sit in Europe with their families.
So this resilience, that's maybe about that. Because it's how to be flexible, how to react even in the positions when you are not the stronger fighter.
But the same time you can live our life under our decisions. And to continue be the city, the capital of the country. So that's really created this meaning, of course, what helped us that's focus on the user.
I think that was in our life more from business in Ukraine.
The negotiation between government and residents was not where the user in the first place.
Mainly it's declarated. But originally we saw that, for example, some process, it's more important than some person. And there was not user friendly, there was not ready for inclusion and et cetera, et cetera. And a lot of examples.
That's why when we focused really on the users and we built the systems where we collecting requests, where we understand the mood of our residents, that help us to implement different approaches, how to help them.
That was biggest my personal vision, that even in the moment of challenge, if you deeply focused on that what your user need. Even in this moment, when your community have to be flexible, have to be united, have react fastly. In this moment, the digital instruments who organize this connection that plays the main role.
[00:33:29] Tamlyn Shimizu: Really great words.
[00:33:32] Oleg Polovynko: And really good questions for everyone who is listening. How you feel in your city after these examples. How you feel in your system. Do you feel safe, for example, in the moment of flooding or some tornado comes Do I know how the residents, the state level will protect me? How they care about me, how they help me to be informed and to be ready?
[00:34:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:34:06] Oleg Polovynko: Through what channel?
[00:34:08] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. Really great words to leave people with on the main interview part. So thank you so much for sharing all those experiences. I'd like to bring us to our fun segment that we have and that the segment that we've chosen for you today is called Top or Flop.
Top or flop. Respond quickly with your positive or negative review on a variety of topics.
So you either say top or you flop and then we just go through it quickly and then at the end we can, you can explain more if you, if you'd like. Okay.
Okay.
[00:34:45] Oleg Polovynko: Yep.
[00:34:45] Tamlyn Shimizu: Super apps for cities.
[00:34:48] Oleg Polovynko: Top.
[00:34:49] Tamlyn Shimizu: Autonomous buses.
[00:34:51] Oleg Polovynko: Top.
[00:34:52] Tamlyn Shimizu: Top. AI mayors as decision making assistants.
[00:34:58] Oleg Polovynko: I don't know if you've heard this. No, no, no, no. Not ready, not ready.
[00:35:03] Tamlyn Shimizu: Not ready for that.
AI crisis prediction for disaster preparedness. So using AI for disaster preparedness.
[00:35:13] Oleg Polovynko: Top.
[00:35:14] Tamlyn Shimizu: No Car Sundays.
[00:35:17] Oleg Polovynko: Top.
[00:35:20] Tamlyn Shimizu: Working from home. Remote working.
[00:35:23] Oleg Polovynko: No, no.
[00:35:24] Tamlyn Shimizu: Flop.
[00:35:27] Oleg Polovynko: Flop, flop, flop.
[00:35:28] Tamlyn Shimizu: Virtual public spaces.
[00:35:32] Oleg Polovynko: Flop.
[00:35:32] Tamlyn Shimizu: Flop. Drone based emergency responses.
Top. Good. Do you want to explain any of your answers.
[00:35:45] Oleg Polovynko: About the flops? The digital spaces? I think that the community have to be face to face. That's the main value of community. Because in digital we already have enough platforms for some community creations like alumni of universities, et cetera. So for this exchange there is enough spaces but there are collect community in the parks. It's more valuable about AI mayors, I like engineer understand that we need more experience in digital mayors. We don't have it originally because only maybe one, two years ago.
Okay. In 2021 the data driven decisions one of the top topics on the smart conference. Smart city conference. So that means that now only finishing the moment of implementing such solutions that what I see from ecosystems. So we don't have good data sets for AI learning. ML learning in this area. And that's not about the decisions, the mayor decisions, the data set of that. Because the role of mayor, it's really important. So I think that we have to be ready for that maybe in 10 years somehow.
[00:37:40] Tamlyn Shimizu: Good points. Now we come to our final question. It's the question I ask every single guest that comes onto the podcast and the question is to you, what is a smart city.
[00:37:54] Oleg Polovynko: Again? I mean engineers for me, smart in digital area it's anything where we have the packages, commands, some networks and that's all about the smart city for me. Now if we talk about from the residence point of view, it's more about minimum level as you have from enterprise businesses.
So for example, if you have your banking applications which helps you to do anything you want with your money without physical connection, all the documents you are signing in your applications or communications you are doing through this channel. So you fully don't know where is the building of your bank. You know only the app what you need. In my vision, cities now can call themselves smart if they have the same on the same level of UX UI which is standard in your region, for example. This is a minimum level.
[00:39:15] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay, yeah, good threshold there. So with that, that's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for coming on to speak to me Oleg. I really appreciate you taking the time and I also really appreciate your resilience spirit, all the work that you're doing in Kyiv, also to share those learnings with other cities so that they can become more prepared also for different disasters. So thank you so much for your time Oleg.
[00:39:40] Oleg Polovynko: Thank you. Our country is still in a war, so I'm glad that we are talking in this western community, western part of the world which now against barbarian worlds with barbarian values.
So stay with Ukraine and support Ukraine. Thank you for your time.
[00:40:05] Tamlyn Shimizu: Thank you very much. Great words to end on and thank you to all of our listeners.
It wouldn't happen without you, so don't forget you can always create a free account on BABLE SmartCities EU. You can find out more about projects, the people that might get happen solutions and implementations. Thank you very much.
[00:40:22] Tamlyn Shimizu: Thank you all for listening.
[00:40:23] Tamlyn Shimizu: I'll see you at the next stop on the journey to a better urban life.
