Even during the 2020 presidential campaign, Belarusians, deservedly proud of the level of development of the IT sector in the country, began to use digital technologies to resist the power of Alexander Lukashenko. Next, it was the Golos platform, which, according to its creators, provided an alternative vote count in the elections and proved the falsification of its results.

Now, Belarus IT experts have gone further – at the New Belarus conference in Vilnius, the Digital Belarus project was announced, in which citizens of the Republic of Belarus will be able to work, receive services, vote on various political decisions, pay taxes and even have a digital passport. DW asked Pavel Lieber, creator of the Voice platform, for more details on the initiative.

DW: What are the initiatives to promote digital democracy that were discussed at the conference in Vilnius?

Pavel Lieber: Today, we already have a set of various platforms that were created over the last two years and that covered various levels of social life. Together with those still planned, they will form a single digital ecosystem, which will be called “Digital Belarus”. Or maybe “New Belarus”, we haven’t decided yet. “Digital Belarus” is the working title of the project.

We are trying to create an ecosystem in which Belarusians, at home or abroad, can find some benefit for themselves. Previously, we already had a medical and legal platform, a platform of mutual assistance, control over people’s will – “Voice”.

That is, the first piece of this digital platform is the practical benefit for people, building horizontal connections and even the opportunity to earn money. This is very important because a doctor who earns money through a digital platform (probably an e-health project. – Ed.) is becoming less reliant on the Ministry of Health and Lukashenka’s phrases like “we’re going to fire you all”.

The second part of the platform is political life. If people come together, they need representation to make joint decisions. And here we are working in partnership with democratic forces. Our platform can become a tool to express the will of citizens in the digital space to choose leaders, determine their policies and so on.

– The subject, obviously, will not be limited to a policy.

– In addition, an important economic effect appears – if we are talking about a state that has created political structures for itself, then in any case there must be an institution of tax collection, because the state must have a budget. Funds must be directed towards culture, the army, international relations – this is serious money.

We don’t believe it’s possible to quickly turn a passport into a digital one, but with small steps you can get through it. Perhaps not a complete travel document, but recognized at first by individual countries, then by an increasing number of them. There are similar precedents – the Order of Malta, a state that leases its territory from Italy and is recognized by most countries and the UN.

I think that in the future we will move from the state as a territory to the state as an association of values ​​and, in that sense, why not try to do it now? Also, organizing people, political structures and your army will allow you to move to the next level and regain your native territory.

– You mentioned a digital passport. How will it be technically?

– Actually, it can be any account that gives you something. It must be safe, secure and support the ability to determine that you are a living person. All these technologies are available today. For example, people who open foreign bank accounts online go through KYC (know your customer – know your customer. – Ed.) – scan a passport, photograph a face, and then the system itself determines that this is really a person and that the documents are real.

Much more serious is the semantic task that political structures will have to solve: why should a person be in this state? Just awareness, fashion or rejection of Lukashenka is not enough, people should get tangible benefits for themselves and for Belarusians inside and outside the country as well.

This ID can be used for anything – people can earn on the platform or receive preferences in different countries (like business verification) or not receive account blocking and so on.

– And how will voting on the adoption of certain political decisions be technically organized?

– If we say that we are building a full-fledged state, then there should be an anonymous authorized person, who is definitely a Belarusian. This requires two factors – a document and a Belarusian. There are already technologies that compare a document and a person, and technically we can organize a vote until tomorrow.

Next, we need to rebuild the political institutions where that vote becomes necessary. For example, democratic forces announced the creation of a cabinet (from Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. – Ed.), and Belarusians can vote for a program or a representative in this body. Technically, it won’t be a chatbot like Golos, but a separate website or mobile app – likely for Belarusians at home and abroad alike.

And here again, the problem is not technical, but semantic – how many Belarusians will vote in the cabinet or the Coordinating Council, why will they do so? There are policy frameworks that will be able to clearly answer the question of why we need to choose people and what to do next, so it’s okay to ensure that voting is anonymous and secure.

– Speaking of security. Politically motivated persecution does not stop in Belarus, people are sent to prison for comments on social networks, the Golos platform itself has been recognized as an extremist, which is likely to happen with Digital Belarus. How will you ensure the reliability of the storage of personal data so that it does not fall into the hands of security forces?

– This is a very important question. None of those who are now creating the platform want to own the personal data of Belarusians. There is a solution that allows for decentralized data storage, for example, based on blockchain. In fact, this is a crypto wallet that stores not money, but your data, and it belongs only to you.

There is no record, there is no base or person who can steal a database and sell it for cognac. Let’s use exactly these solutions. Today they exist in the form of mobile apps – you can check in once, delete the app and return it when needed. It’s not very convenient, but it’s safe.

At the same time, we understand that we will be faced with the fact that we do not have any data, but this is the situation we want to reach. In today’s environment, the data store is the most vulnerable link and we want to drop it from the start.

– When do you plan to launch the Digital Belarus platform?

– We can leave now. But when the war started (in Ukraine – Ed.), many people switched to other projects. Our history is mostly voluntary, we do not use grants or donors for the technical part – businessmen and volunteers are involved. We have only recently restructured to continue working.

We’ve already started showing private demos for initiatives to get feedback from them. We will also launch a limited trial for 1,000-2,000 people in September, and according to the results, October will be a fair time when we can make this platform available to the public.