Administrator Samantha Power Speaks to Press at the Diia Business Center

ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Good morning, everybody. I am most honored to be here with Mayor [Anatolii] Fedoruk, and with – where did he go – my friend, Mykhailo Fedorov, the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine. Mayor Fedoruk visited Washington not long ago, and he said to me, “you have to come to Bucha to see with your own eyes the recovery that the Ukrainian people are making happen.” Bucha became famous all around the world for the wrong reasons, but he said “when you come to Bucha, you will see the strength and the resilience of Ukrainian people, and Bucha will become famous for all of the right reasons.” And that is what I have seen today. 

In his Constitution Day speech a few weeks ago, President Zelenskyy talked about how, as he put it, transformation is bigger than rebuilding. We are not only seeing rebuilding here in Bucha, we are seeing transformation. 

I just met a grandmother, Hanna Arsentiivna. I also got to meet her grandson and her son. Hanna spent her life working in a local school here in Bucha. But Putin’s forces came along during the full-scale invasion last year, and destroyed her home, destroyed her street, and fragmented her community. Hanna is now, like so many in this community, using Diia’s e-recovery platform to register all of the damage inflicted on her home and to apply for government support to repair it. She and her family have uploaded photos of all of the infrastructure damage, the Damage Assessment Commission has reviewed her claim, and she has been approved to receive resources to do the rebuilding because she wants to return home before the winter. 

I’ve always been so impressed by Diia’s dual ability to provide responsive government service, at the same time, it provides such accountability and transparency to cut down on the risk of corruption. And the way in which, through the e-recovery platform, a family, like Hanna’s family, will receive resources to repair the damage, but those resources can be used only for home repair and building materials. I have traveled all around the world in my career and been to many, many war zones, and many countries recovering from trauma and war damage. When resources are being used for recovery and reconstruction, there's a great risk that the people who need those resources – most don't get access to those resources, because elites, or people with power, or people who control the resources, divert those resources from families in need. What is happening here through this e-recovery platform is something I have never seen before. Technology harnessed immediately and with urgency for the public good – accountability to the people and for the people, as a design feature of the program from the very start.

We in the United States, I have to say, are in general somewhat awestruck by the range of capabilities that the Diia app already has. Every time we tell people about the more than 120 services that are available on the platform, Americans say to me, “where can we get Diia?” And I say, well, once Ukraine has won the war and completed its recovery and reconstruction, Mykhailo is going to be spending a lot more time in the United States. But the fact that you can do everything from access your passport, to create an online bank account, to apply for, and be vigilant about, construction permits – all of this is such an important multifaceted aspect of why Diia is so critical. 

Ukrainians know, and I think are rightly proud of the fact that this country is a breadbasket for the world. Ukrainian wheat has fed, over many, many years and decades, millions of people living in food insecure environments. Ukraine is famous for its grain fields and for its wheat. Now Ukraine is famous for another export, and that is Diia. We have so many countries coming to us at USAID and asking, “how can we get some of the functions that Diia is making available to Ukrainians, how can we get those functions in our country?” So, USAID and the Ministry of Digital Transformation are in fact now working together with leaders in developing countries, in Africa and in Latin America, to see which aspects Diia can fit into their particular circumstances.

So, as we stand here today in Bucha, a community that is known for the atrocities that were perpetrated against its people, we also know, and can say with great confidence, that within a short period of time Bucha will become even better known for its entrepreneurship, and for the creativity, and resilience of its people. While Putin’s Russian Federation, everyday become more and more known for burning things, Ukraine becomes more and more known for building things and not only building things, but transforming those things.

Thank you so much.