Diane Francis: Ukraine’s IT industry not bugged by corruption problems

By Denys Krasnikov

Journalist and expert on corruption Diane Francis gestures as she speaks during a panel discussion at the Lviv IT Arena conference in Lviv on Sept. 30 (Lviv IT Arena)

LVIV, Ukraine – Ukraine’s IT industry is doing well because unlike other sectors of the economy, it isn’t plagued by corruption, according to Diane Francis, the editor-at-large for the National Post and a member of advisory council at the Hudson Institute think tank’s Kleptocracy Initiative.

“The IT sector is the fastest-growing industry in the Ukrainian economy,” Francis told the Kyiv Post at the sidelines of the Lviv IT Arena conference in Lviv on Sept. 30. “When you don’t have corruption in a sector, this is what you get. Ukrainians are smart. And (techies) are doing well because they are outside the corruption problems.”

The 3rd Lviv IT Arena conference, an international annual event for tech industry representatives, started on Sept. 30 and is to go on for three days, until Oct. 2.

Award-winning journalist Francis thinks Ukraine’s IT sector could and should set the pace for other industries.

“It’s a role model,” she said. “It’s also a lesson to the public and to the political people that when you stop corruption, and you leave Ukrainians alone, soon you’ll extrapolate the numbers of (economic) growth.”

According to her, the same progress could easily happen to the country’s vast agriculture industry if the conditions were made similar.

During Francis’ speech during a Lviv IT Arena panel dedicated to clarifying the importance of innovations and information technologies for Ukraine, she said technologies were indeed “miraculous,” but only when used for good things.

“How about hacking the Russian hackers?” she said making a joke to illustrate her point, but then added that the tech community should be more involved in embracing civil society. “A corrupt government won’t use IT tools to fight corruption itself,” she said referring to ProZorro, a nonprofit aimed at eliminating corruption in public procurement via its electronic procurement system.

“There are so many very entrepreneurial crooks in the Ukrainian government,” she went on, saying that while she has had interviews with almost all of the top businesspeople in Ukraine, she’s never interviewed any of the country’s oligarchs.

According to her, IT is a great business story, but also one that won’t involve oligarchs. Instead, the new technologies could completely change Ukraine – reboot it.

“The IT world can speed up the rebooting of Ukraine,” she said. And young people, who dominate the IT industry according to Francis, are more open to change than others.

Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov can be reached at krasnikov@kyivpost.com. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by Beetroot, Ciklum and SoftServe. The content is independent of the donors.

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