The experience of leading countries in e-governance is very important for Ukraine, because it helps avoid many errors, simplify the process of modernization, and choose best practices of open data and e-governance. The city of Vinnytsia has developed its own algorithm of implementing administrative services allowing citizens to participate in decision-making, monitoring the processes in the city, and getting useful information on-line. This algorithm is based on the experience of the city of Martin (Slovakia), which received the UN award for the best project aimed at fighting corruption in 2011.

A year ago, Vinnytsia was selected for the participation in the project "Transparent Ukrainian City: Pilot Model of E-government to Improve the Provision of Administrative Services" funded by the Delegation of the European Union. Later, Vinnytsia experience was handed to another three partner cities - Ivano-Frankivsk, Lutsk, and Mykolaiv. UNDP has contributed to the process with sharing its experience of the budget visualization and budget calendar tools, available at www.openbudget.in.ua, and assisted the City Council with using these tools for making the local budget information more transparent and user-friendly for citizens.

"It is symbolic that Vinnytsia was selected as the venue for this conference. According to the last e-governance survey, Vinnytsia obtained the first place on implementation of e-government tools and received 30 out of 31 points on the availability of information on administrative services, which is very high. Vinnytsia is very transparent city. In Vinnytsia a lot of data is available in the Internet in the machine readable format. Today, Vinnytsia is a reliable partner of the UN agencies and the UN Development Programme in Ukraine. Last year, Vinnytsia became one of the Ukrainian "smart cities" selected by the United Nations Economic Commission," noted Halyna Kokhan, UNDP Open Data, Transparency and Accountability Expert.

Serhiy Kudlayenko – former Head the Department of Administrative Services at Vinnytsia City Council – emphasized that the transparency in the provision of administrative services, use of budget funds, and clarity of actions were the issues existing for decades in communication between authorities and citizens. "When we started working on establishing the Center of Administrative Services at the Vinnytsia City Council, many letters from public authorities were received arguing that you cannot put all the officials in a transparent cabinet with audio and video surveillance, electronic line, etc."

His words echoed Volodymyr Romanenko, Head of the Information Technology Department at Vinnytsia City Council, who said that the formation of a transparent government is a priority in the state's agenda that is why the City Council is constantly improving various services using international experience. Whereas, many of these issues are resolved efficiently in other countries, their experience can be accumulated, lessons learnt, and the most effective examples implemented in practice.

"Today, Vinnytsia is one of the best examples in e-governance, particularly in municipal decisions," says Oleh Levchenko, Executive Director of Podil Agency for Regional Development.

As electronic tools are an integral part of effective state management, Ukraine should use the best experiences of advanced countries in e-governance and open data and implement to be able compete effectively in the modern world.