Diia-logue or Monologue? When Complaints Go Digital but Solutions Don’t

The book of complaints and suggestions, abolished in 2019, is making a comeback. Following the canon of digital transformation, it will be integrated into the Diia app — as announced by Minister Mykhailo Fedorov on TikTok.

In the age of postmodernity, it truly is hard to invent something new — but surely not this hard.

The 1545 government hotline has been around for decades. Since 2012, it has also accepted online submissions. And it’s not like no one uses it: 1.7 million appeals were recorded in 2024, nearly 400,000 in the first half of this year alone.

So what’s really happening is that the Ministry of Digital Transformation will simply “bolt on” 1545 — along with the entire infrastructure of the government contact center — to Diia, and voilà: another digital breakthrough!

Minister Fedorov’s expectation that complaints through Diia will fundamentally reform state governance—that each minister will begin their morning by checking complaints and constructively responding to them—sounds childishly naive.

Less than one percent of appeals on the hotline concern the work of executive or local authorities; only 7.5 percent relate to legal violations. The undisputed leader among topics is social welfare. I suspect the only one who will be truly rattled by Diia complaints is the head of the Pension Fund, Yevhen Kapinus (as if things were easy for him before).

Here’s a flourish showing the digitalization level: the most common complaint about the government hotline (regularly tested by “mystery shoppers”) is the refusal to accept verbal appeals and the demand to submit them in writing.

Still, let’s thank Mykhailo Fedorov for this fine initiative—a tiny diamond in which each facet reflects the distorted features of the current government.

Unrestrained incompetence

Complaints in Diia are a perfect reflection of the depth of the reforms of recent years. Not just because everything “new” is actually old in a new wrapper, but above all because all these innovations are invariably non-priority, non-urgent, non-useful and, at times, outright harmful. “Seven lean years—and no one starved”—the most popular saying in our editorial office in recent years—could well serve as the motto of the Shmyhal government. The key is to imitate vigorous activity.

The National Cashback program took 400 million hryvnias from the state budget in the first four months of 2024 and contributed a whopping 0.001 percent to GDP.

Made in Ukraine drained 8 billion hryvnias from the budget and produced a 0.6 percent bump in GDP.

The Entrepreneurship Support Fund took 18 billion, and as for what it gave back… no one even bothered to calculate. It exists, and apparently, that’s enough.

Our government is so generous with “qualitative improvements” that despite a labor shortage, we have double-digit unemployment; despite tax hikes and growing tax revenues, we urgently need an additional 500 billion hryvnias for this year’s budget; and despite the state’s overwhelming presence in the economy, economic growth is effectively zero.

Immeasurable superficiality

Complaints in Diia offer are also a vivid illustration of the excessive inadequacy of our state administration. Yes, digitalization exists, but optimization does not.

I don’t believe Fedorov is unaware that every government body, from a village council to the Supreme Court, already has its own hotline. Yet he’s creating another one. Because, who knows, someone might suddenly feel compelled to lodge a complaint between paying a fine and obtaining a certificate of no criminal record. So let it be.

By the same logic, our public administration is overgrown with all sorts of offices, councils, advisors, coordination groups, consultants—even entire ministries with highly dubious mandates.

It’s a shame that the Ministry of National Unity is likely being dissolved, as I would have loved to see how their KPIs are measured.

Naturally, the more painful the problem, the more entities appear to camouflage an unwillingness to solve it. No wonder we have over a dozen law enforcement bodies and twice as many agencies with law-enforcement functions. All key agencies—even the State Audit Office—has their own hotline for reporting corruption or abuse. Not to mention the entire whistleblower portal from the National Agency on Corruption Prevention.

According to its counter, since September 2023 the portal has received 6,000 reports, only 120 of which came from actual whistleblowers. The difference boils down, on one hand, to protection and reward, and on the other, to liability for the truth of the corruption claims. As we can see, anonymous reports are still winning hands down. And most complaints are about colleagues, not management—5,104 versus 878. Frightening.

What kind of protection can we talk about when our typical example is Oleh Tatarov, cemented in his office like a python in the House with Chimaeras. No reward can offset the real risks of a high-profile exposure. After all, there’s no guarantee any punishment will follow. It almost certainly won’t.

We attach literally totemic significance to our anti-corruption authorities, anxiously fearing that our idol might tilt, gather dust or burn in the sun. But we show no concern that, despite pleading for rain, not a single cloud appears in the sky. Can you recall one high-profile, resonant case that ended in a verdict and real punishment?

The Lohvynskyi case has dragged on so long that 54 million hryvnias no longer seem impressive. The Rotterdam+ scandal has been buried by statute of limitations. Tatarov’s case was transferred from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) to the Security Service and quietly closed. The case of Serhii Kurchenko, a Yanukovych-era oligarch, seems simply forgotten. Roman Nasirov, former head of the State Fiscal Service, has been waiting for the statute of limitations to expire so long that he might soon wear that electronic bracelet permanently. Only former MP Oleksandr Onyshchenko has been convicted, but in absentia while he’s abroad.

So, if we mock the public for complaining about colleagues instead of leaders, then anti-corruption bodies deserve the same treatment. After all, they are surely representing the people. There were some suspicions about MPs from previous convocations and former law-enforcers; a few $15,000 bribes; confiscated Lexuses and other small “trifles.”

Yes, a deputy prime minister did get exposed, but let’s not get carried away—he’s unlikely to return to Ukraine to chill in pre-trial custody. He’s no Mykola Solskyi, former Minister of Agrarian Policy; he is valuable.

A bit of eye-opening statistics: in the first five months of 2025, Ukrainian courts issued 2,032 rulings in corruption-related cases—37 percent more than in the same period of 2024. That’s progress! In 97 percent of cases, corrupt officials were penalized with fines ranging from 850 to 680,000 UAH—that’s regression. Only 44 people were sent to prison—that’s depressing… And the explanation is simple: the most common corruption charge in Ukraine is violation of financial reporting rules. Admittedly, it’s a very vague corruption charge because maybe there was unlawful gain or maybe it was just a bookkeeping error or sloppy record-keeping. But investigating such cases is a delight: it’s unscary, uncomplicated, and the reports on disclosures look good.

Unheard-of audacity

In fact, we have come to the main point: complaints in Diia are a perfect example of how people with authority systematically try to shift their responsibilities onto people without authority, i.e., ordinary citizens.

They say, what other channels of communication do you need? Go ahead, tell us about your legendary corruption. Don’t want to talk about it? Well, there’s only so much we can do!

I strongly support all kinds of deepening communication between the population and the authorities, but in general, neither the protection of law and order, nor the elimination of excessive red tape, nor anti-corruption activities depend on the number of citizens’ appeals on these issues.

What useful information can they provide if only 18 percent of Ukrainians have personally encountered corruption? For comparison, in 2015, 65.6 percent of Ukrainians encountered corruption at least once a year. Moreover, another indicator—the prevalence of corruption in the country—has not changed significantly in ten years: then, 85 percent considered corruption to be widespread, now 91.4 percent perceive it as such. Either Ukrainians have become a little more cunning and have stopped talking about their own experiences with corruption, or corruption has largely “moved” to the upper echelons, where there are no respondents to opinion polls. Most likely, it is both.

Take a look at President Zelenskyy’s meeting with members of the American Chamber of Commerce. During the 34-minute gathering, business representatives thanked the president 37 times and complained about nothing at all. For example, about the frequent and senseless changes in tax legislation, the lack of insurance for military risks in the fourth year of the war, and the chronic changes in the procedure for reserving employees from military service.

Well, you might say, this is American business! But meetings with purely Ukrainian associations are no less like a joint celebration of Thanksgiving and Forgiveness Sunday. Neither the long-standing shameful practice of paying taxes “in advance,” nor chronic “tender kickbacks,” nor the flood of trumped-up criminal cases “for ties to the aggressor state,” which have become a separate type of business for law enforcement agencies in recent years, have spoiled the holidays.

I am just curious whether the hotline has received any complaints about the unprecedented know-how of recent months—the mandatory payment of 0.15 percent of turnover by all, without exception, clients of the Office of Large Taxpayers? I think not a single one.

Businesspeople whose names are known in the Presidential Office are generally not to be envied. The practice of “paying bribes up the chain” in addition to the usual tax payments is as old as the world itself, but in the past it gave you protection and guarantees. Now, however, there are none. Paying the conditional but mandatory 10 percent “up the chain” does not mean that this month you will not have a tax inspector at your doorstep, next month a social worker and then a security service agent. You can’t refuse anyone because the goals are noble—“for drones,” “for electronic warfare,” “for salaries.” And the alternatives are unpleasant—inspections, criminal proceedings, seizure of assets, sanctions.

Tell me, where can you complain about this? And who would risk it? There is no protection anywhere, and now “Washington overseers” have removed themselves from the picture.

The silence is understandable if you have been working here for many years and know for sure that complaining is not a solution but only exacerbates the problem. If you plan to work here for many more years, you have to hide your disgust as carefully as possible and work with what you have, even if it is Timur Mindich, Igor Abramovich or Seyyar Kurshutov.

By the way, if you have been working in the Ukrainian government for six years, you could probably write a book about top-level corruption in Ukraine, but it is better to knock up Diia complaints. We understand.

After all, it does not matter how many channels you have for complaints; what matters is how the authorities respond to these complaints. So far, they have not responded at all.