European Policy Institute highlights Ukraine’s service-driven digital transformation in 2025 strategy report
The Lisbon Council, a leading European think tank, has recognized Ukraine’s digital transformation as a global benchmark. In its recent report, «The Service Gap: Europe’s International Digital Strategy 2025», the Council names Ukraine’s Diia app as a «stunningly successful» example of how governments can deliver real, scalable digital services.
In Ukraine, the DIIA app is a stunningly successful example of a service-driven sovereignty play. It provides digital document storage and access to over 70 government services. Launched in beta in 2019, it now serves over 22 million users, has a largely open codebase and a shared, out-of-country infrastructure to provide resilience through the ongoing conflict with Russia
Editor’s note: While the original source uses the word «conflict», it is widely recognized — including by the EU and UN — as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The report critiques the European Union’s current digital strategy for focusing too heavily on technical infrastructure — connectivity, data layers, and AI systems — without ensuring that these tools are directly linked to meaningful public services. It cautions that this supply-driven model risks building impressive systems that fail to achieve broad adoption, and argues that Europe must shift to a demand-led, service-first approach that begins with solving real user needs.
In this context, Ukraine’s Diia platform stands out as a compelling counterexample: a digital solution developed with user services at its core, widely adopted by over 22 million people, and resilient enough to function during wartime. It is precisely the kind of model that Europe is being encouraged to study and emulate.
This international recognition reinforces Ukraine’s position at the forefront of digital governance, demonstrating how public services, not just platforms, can drive digital sovereignty and resilience.
