On 29 October, as a part of RE: THINK Investment Forum the special event ‘EU4Business Entrepreneurial Journey’ took place at SPALAH Hub in Mariupol. The President of Ukraine and high-level officials from the European Union officially opened the EU Project Office at the beginning of the event.
With the support of EUACI and the EU Delegation to Ukraine, the representatives of the local self-government of Mariupol, EU technical assistance programmes, small and medium entrepreneurs have discussed the means that can help prevent corruption in the city.
An important EUACI’s activity is toassist the local authorities in Ukraine in implementing effective procedures and processes, as well as provide practical tools to prevent corruption. Geoportal of the city of Mariupol, presented during the event, is an effective G2B and G2P tool created with the support of EUACI as part of the “Integrity Cities” project. It was designed to make the city data user-friendly, accessible and understandable for the citizens, CSOs, media and business community, thereby increasing the transparency of local self-government.
The event was attended by more than 100 representatives of small and medium business enterprises (SME) and local self-government. It was dedicated to the review of European support programmes for SMEs. Entrepreneurs have learned how to start a new business, where to find the necessary funds, and how to enter international markets. During panel discussions local private entrepreneurs shared their experiences of starting and running businesses with the support from EU projects.
Eka Tkeshelashvili inter alia talked about the Geoportal during the panel discussion “Your Local Government at Your Service.”
“Geo portal is one of the very interesting tools developed for the city of Mariupol. Its aim is to fight corruption through creating modern easily accessible transparent digital ways of delivering information and services to the citizens and businesses. It provides them with access to every piece of information needed to start, maintain and expand business, as well as to know how the money of taxpayers are being spent by the city for its own development”.
Serhiy Orlov pointed out how the new tool will help local authorities to work with data.
“This project is very significant to us for many reasons. Above all, it is the first comprehensive tool introduced in Mariupol, the only IT system that makes information from various sources accessible. Thismeans we have created a tool that combines data from different departments and units. Before that, a lot of this data was stored as some kind of records or Excel files without an access to it. Some of it weren’t even in a digital format.”
Assistance to local authorities in fighting against corruption is one of the key elements of activities of EUACI. Our goal is to provide a transparent government model by implementing effective anti-corruption tools.
