Regulatory challenges affecting ICT development in Ukraine

This chapter presents a descriptive view of Ukraine’s approach towards the development of e-government and broadband infrastructure. The description consists of an overview of the national ICT sector, the regulations that created this sector and the influence of these dynamics in the development of electronic governance. The aim of this description is to highlight factors affecting the development of ICT in Ukraine, more from a regulatory stand point. The point of departure in discussing ICT development is with respect to telecom networks, and e-government services. These two issues form the basis for developing electronic communications, which will be mentioned repeatedly in this chapter.
Ukraine’s ICT market is still budding. It is a growing market. The country became independent in 1991. It inherited the telecom legacy of the old Soviet Union and decided to forge a telecommunications path for itself. However, the ICT market is still developing and Ukraine is still below in the e-government implementation ranking. This is despite the regulatory and financial investments provided for initiatives in these sub sector of the ICT market. According to a study by the International Telecommunication Union, Ukraine is ranked 76th in the world with respect to the development of ICT. Ukraine also lags behind all neighbouring countries that joined the EU in the middle of the past decade with respect to most indicators measuring ICT development. As a consequence, Ukraine ranks among the lowest countries in the region in terms of network readiness (64th place out of 139 economies) and global competitiveness (79th place out of 140 economies) in 2016. The significance of ICT policies is broadly understood at the highest political level in Ukraine, however their implementation has always posed a challenge. This was not a positive result as Ukraine was previously ranked 67th in 2001, losing out on nine points. With respect to e-government implementation, the country now ranks 62nd out of 193 countries across the globe.
This outlook leaves one to wonder, why this is so, despite the regulatory and financial incentives provided to sector? This dilemma influenced the idea for writing this chapter. As it will help Ukrainian authorities to identify ways towards solving the challenges identified in this chapter. In this chapter, it is assumed, that there will be a greater penetration of broadband infrastructure and extensive diffusion of e-government services in Ukraine, if the challenges identified in the concluding part of this chapter are addressed.
However, the chapter is written from a legal perspective and not from a socio-technical or a socio-economic perspective –though there are elements of such in this chapter. And the chapter is organized as follows. Section 2.1 is the introduction; section 2.2 presents an overview of policies and regulations influencing ICTs in Ukraine; section 2.3 presents a snapshot of the national ICT sector which is dominated by the mobile market and the Broadband Access Technology market; Section 2.4 provides an insight into the various ICT regulations, how it affected the markets and the challenges in implementing these policies; section 2.5 highlights the role , successes and challenges of implementing regulations aimed at implementing e-government; and section 2.7 concludes this chapter by highlighting emerging themes that served as factors affecting ICT development, within the context of this chapter.