You're reading: Lawmakers from IT industry pledge to boost conditions for peers

Ukrainian IT sector received a bit of hope that good changes are coming in 2015 after the parliament elections this October.

Five former tech industry players received parliament member mandates and became IT sector lobbyists at the legislative level.

Luckily for the industry, the lobbyists have different background and represent different parties. Olha Belkova (Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc) was a managing partner of East Labs Business Accelerator and Viktor Halasyuk (Liashko Radical Party) was president of Bionic Hill innovation park in times of its active construction. Samopomich’s IT lobbyists are Oleksandr Danchenko, former general director of Data Group telecom provider, Oleksiy Skrypnyk, founder at Eleks Software outsourcing company and Vlad Voskresensky, founder of the InvisibleCRM b2b software provider.

The IT delegate in Kyiv City Council is Andriy Logvin (Samopomich), the founder of modnaKasta, an on-line shopping club and one of the most successful e-commerce platforms in Ukraine.

“In Ukraine we have a popular word IT, the real meaning of which is a puzzle for many. Those who ship laptops, fridges and washing machines over the border are also called IT business people by the majority of Ukrainians. This is a huge issue, since people need to be well educated on the industry terms,” Danchenko says. Hence, clear definition of industry terms is the first thing IT lobbyists plan to do.

Danchenko says favorable business conditions as the second priority on the IT lobbyists’ to-do-list. “We have many companies that develop software, ship it abroad, and then we buy this software in Ukraine for thrice the price,” Danchenko says. “This is irritating and ridiculous,” he adds. Enterprises shouldn’t have to flee out of Ukraine seeking better taxes or more transparent corporate law.

According to Danchenko, his main achievement so far is creation of the a special IT committee in parliament, as it has never existed ever since Ukraine has gained independence. “We have been the only country in the world without such a committee,” Danchenko says. “As its head, I aim to make its work open for public by constant reporting on its operations through the parliament web-portal.”

The biggest national goal of the committee is to help improve army communication in the east of Ukraine in the war zone. “Army without communication technologies is the one without management. Our guys die as there is no fast communication in the fields,” Danchenko says. According to him, the new committee will soon have negotiations with the US army representatives about possibilities of shipping army communication technologies to Ukraine.

Voskresensky, Danchenko’s colleague from Samopomich, wants to concentrate more on the legislative barriers inside of the IT industry.

“Ukraine’s IT was always growing ‘despite’, instead of ‘thanks to’,” Voskresensky says. Therefore, the reforms must be numerous and will take a very long time to implement.

“We want to have more IT businesses in the country, more outsourcers, consumer product startups, e-commerce platforms. For this taxation needs to be reorganized, court law and corporate law significantly improved,” Voskresensky says. “But our task as IT lobbyists is to watch closely in this upcoming waterfall of reforms when the interests of IT are being saved. Too many reforms will only harm IT,” he adds.

Better education and practical training programs for Ukrainian IT specialists and attracting specialists from abroad to share their experience is another must-do according to Voskresensky.

Ukrainians should also feel more freedom and shouldn’t follow a common practice of registering their companies in Cyprus or Delaware, U.S., where the taxes are the lowest and corporate law is the most transparent.

“For Microsoft to consider Ukraine for opening its next R&D center, we need to grant protection of intellectual property rights and clear corporate law for easy company management. They must not be afraid that someone might come and take out all the servers in the office one day or at least they must be sure they can protect their rights in court,” Voskresensky says. “Question is – what can we offer Microsoft to be competitive compared to Russia, Poland, India, etcetera? Why does Microsoft need to consider us instead of them? It is even a matter of business more, than just politics,” he adds.

Olha Belkova was in parliament as a member of Vitaly Klichko’s UDAR party since 2012. She authored a bill on e-commerce, and plans to continue lobbying for its passage in January.

Belkova says that many issues in Ukraine can be solved only with the help of IT solutions, which is why she decided to lobby IT industry in the parliament.

“If we build effective IT eco-system, then the first business where investors will go to will be IT. It takes least costs, has least barriers and you don’t have to think of the risks of long term investments,” Belkova says.

E-government and electronic document flow should also be organized in the next five years, according to Belkova. “While e-government and e-document flow are not popular word combinations among our parliament colleagues, businesses craves transparency,” Belkova says.

Cyber theft practice is also a thing of primary importance, since places many e-processes under the great risk. Cyber police or specialists in cyber theft should appear in the government as soon as many processes go on-line.

Logvin, the founder of modnaKasta online shop, wants to regulate Kyiv City Council’s budget to make its expenditures public.

“Ukrainians will continue being unsatisfied with the government and its actions as long as its processes are kept in a secret. Our citizens should be able to open some web-portal and look at where the tax withdrawn from their salary went,” Logvin says. “This is a common practice in the developed countries, and we should also implement that not to look like a third world country.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures CapitalCiklumFISON and SoftServe.