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Валентин ШнайдерAround IT
3 September 2025, 12:06
2025-09-03
"70% of examinations in the Ministry of Digital Affairs are already done by AI, but the state sector is drowning in bureaucracy": Fedorov told how the ministry works and the hiring of its employees
In a conversation with DOU, the Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, told how people are selected for the Ministry of Digital Affairs, what questions he asks during interviews, why bureaucracy remains the main problem of public administration, and how artificial intelligence is used in the department.
In a conversation with DOU, the Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, told how people are selected for the Ministry of Digital Affairs, what questions he asks during interviews, why bureaucracy remains the main problem of public administration, and how artificial intelligence is used in the department.
According to the interview, after five years of work, the department updated the management team and introduced the OKR system. Now each position has a card with tasks and principles, and the candidate selection process is focused on values. According to Fedorov, he sometimes asks provocative questions during interviews. Among them, for example, «When are you going to die?» It is designed to check whether a person thinks strategically and long-term. Another key question is about the most difficult project that the candidate brought to a result, because the minister considers it the ability to «push» that is decisive.
Fedorov admitted that he personally hired only a few top managers, the rest were developed within the ministry. He also emphasized that even the strongest candidate will be rejected if his approaches contradict the team culture. That is why the Ministry of Digital Affairs actively uses test tasks to see how applicants behave in non-standard conditions.
Another topic of the interview is bureaucracy. The minister explained that the department itself managed to optimize processes and train its own artificial intelligence model, which performs up to 70% of examinations for other ministries. This significantly reduced document flow, and now he signs a minimum of papers. However, at the state level, the situation remains critical. According to Fedorov, hiring in the state sector still requires dozens of paper documents and even handwritten signatures, which looks absurd in the 21st century. Procurement is no less problematic, especially in the IT sector, where the current rules are «senseless and unfair.»
Fedorov also spoke about internal personnel changes: five new deputies came from among the former heads of departments. Thus, the Ministry of Digital Affairs seeks to form its own culture from within, where employees not only know the goals, but also share the values and vision of the department.
Despite internal changes in the Ministry of Digital, the problem remains systemic: state procedures that have not been updated for years nullify even successful digital experiments. Optimizing processes within one ministry cannot solve the problem of total bureaucracy, and this is precisely what Fedorov recognizes as one of the main challenges for Ukraine.
Recall, earlier dev.ua wrote about how Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov noted that Ukrainians are actively using the launched national agent with artificial intelligence that provides public services, «Diya.AI.»
