AWS re:Invent 2022: 'Ukraine is now the best testing ground for your product,' says tech minister Mykhailo Fedorov

War ravaged Ukraine is striving to stand on its feet again with the help of technology. While war and destruction continue to haunt the country, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov is trying to rebuild the nation by leveraging technology.

“We believe in big data, analytics, and constant improvement, but as technologists in Ukraine we are using technology (on the) side of light. Kindly send any services that might be useful our way. Ukraine is now the best testing ground for your product," appealed the minister to all companies across the globe.

Describing the war as something out of science fiction, he said that technology has helped Ukraine fight, survive, and plan for a time after the conflict.

Fedorov was speaking at Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s re:Invent event, which is being held in Las Vegas, USA.

An early Russian attack destroyed the building in which the Ukrainian government stored all its backup data -- the backup records of its citizenry and its institutions, the data that literally described an entire nation.

The Ukrainian government later passed a legislation that allowed it to move state registries and data to AWS. Using AWS Snow Devices, the government moved vital information to the cloud.

“To date, 38 government authorities and 24 universities have moved their data, and the services they offer to Ukrainians, onto AWS,” Fedorov said. “What that means is that education continues, the rightful ownership of property is maintained, as is—sadly—a record of what has been damaged and destroyed,” he said.

While cruise missiles have rained down on cities across Ukraine, Federov and his team have huddled around laptops, building systems and services that are helping people access banking, healthcare, school, even job training for careers in technology.

When information was cut off, they built digital television and radio channels to get the official Ukrainian word out.

Along the way, Ukraine has created a digital government infrastructure that the rest of the world may do well to emulate, the minister said.

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