On 1 October 2026 Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers approved, and the Ministry of Digital Transformation announced, єДумка (eDumka), an experimental civic-participation service on the Diia portal. Residents can submit proposals on local issues, track their status, discuss them, rate official responses and take part in local-government surveys. The ministry's announcement says neighbours no longer need to collect paper signatures or queue at local offices. The design is sensible, and it is better than the paper process it replaces. But it puts a state-run gate in front of political speech, so the way that gate is run will decide whether the service deserves trust.
What the pilot actually does
The experiment starts in the Vinnytsia, Volyn, Zaporizhzhia, Ternopil and Kharkiv regions. Other local governments and military administrations may join voluntarily. It runs for two years, and the ministry says full functionality will be built within six months.
The most interesting design choice is who counts as a member of a community. Participation is not limited to people with a registered address. Eligibility is confirmed automatically against state registries for people with a declared residence, internally displaced person (IDP) status, local property, local tax payments or full-time study at a local institution. In a country with millions of displaced people, a residence-only test would exclude exactly the people whose daily lives local councils are reshaping. Checking registries instead of asking for paperwork is a real improvement in state capacity.
Based on the Cabinet decision as reported by Jurliga, which cites Resolution No. 1199 of 30 September 2026, initiatives need support from at least 0.1% of a community's residents. Public discussion runs for 14 calendar days. Authorities must then review a qualifying initiative within 15 calendar days and publish the outcome with a justification. Submissions are moderated before they appear publicly, and electronic identification is required. Jurliga's summary does not spell out data-handling rules, and I could not retrieve the resolution text itself to check.
The strongest case for the sceptics
Critics of state-run participation platforms have three serious arguments.
First, a government that owns the platform also decides which proposals are visible. Pre-publication moderation can quietly become a filter on criticism of the very officials who must answer the proposals.
Second, identity-linked participation creates a record of who complained about which mayor. Even if no one misuses it, people may self-censor.
Third, thresholds and ratings can be gamed by organised groups, while a 0.1% bar can be trivial in a small hromada and demanding in a large city.
These concerns are strongest in wartime. Local officials in frontline regions like Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia hold unusual power. Military administrations are among the bodies that can opt in.
Why the pilot is still the right bet
The alternative is not a free-form public square. It is paper signature drives that are slow, hard to verify and easy to dismiss, or informal social-media pressure with no obligation on officials to answer. eDumka replaces both with a process that carries a legal duty. The 15-day review with a published justification is the key accountability feature. A reasoned refusal on the record is more useful to residents than silence.
Diia also starts with a large base of users. The Ukrinform news agency reported on 30 October 2024 that over 21 million Ukrainians used the app, so a new service does not have to build trust or identity infrastructure from zero. The ministry operates the app and the web portal as one government ecosystem, as its Diia overview page describes. That continuity is why eDumka can verify eligibility without new paperwork.
On cost, the draft version of the resolution, as reported by Interfax-Ukraine in April 2026, said development would be paid for by international technical assistance and other lawful sources. Operating costs would come from the existing Electronic Governance budget programme. That is a modest outlay for a nationwide-capable participation channel, though that report concerned a draft and I could not confirm the final funding terms.
What would make the pilot credible
A two-year experiment is only useful if it is judged against the right tests. Four safeguards would turn a promising design into a trustworthy one:
- Published moderation rules and reasons. Rejected proposals should carry a stated ground, such as incitement or duplication, and an appeal route outside the local authority that is being criticised.
- Data minimisation. The service should confirm eligibility through the registries without showing officials a resident's identity, unless the resident chooses to disclose it. Whether the rules provide for this should be answered publicly before regions join.
- Open outcome data. Submissions, support counts, response times and refusal rates should be published as machine-readable data, so researchers and journalists can check whether officials meet the 15-day deadline.
- A real sunset review. The two-year term should end with an independent evaluation that includes the sceptics' concerns, rather than a default extension.
The design principle behind eDumka is right. Verifying community membership against registries is better than demanding paper proof, and a binding duty to answer is better than an ignored comment box. The remaining risk is not technical. It is whether moderators and local officials are made answerable for how they use the gate. Ukraine is testing this in five regions, which is the proportionate way to find out.
The pilot is also a useful comparison for other governments building participation tools on top of digital identity. The question to ask of any such system is not whether it is digital, but whether citizens can see why their proposal was declined.