Leveraging smart governancefor Ukraine's macroeconomic recovery and stabilisation

Abstract

Objectives: The study aims to develop a strategic framework for integrating smart governance instruments into Ukraine's macroeconomic policy to enhance recovery and stabilisation. This research is vital for maximising the effectiveness of massive international aid, meeting the stringent EU integration criteria, and stimulating private sector growth by mitigating corruption and bureaucratic friction. The paper identifies SG mechanisms to achieve prioritised economic goals (e.g., economic growth, price and labour market stability, attracting FDI). Prior Work: The EU Smart Governance model and institutional resilience ground the paper, postulating that institutional quality is essential during economic crises and stabilisation. It builds directly on empirical data from Ukraine's pioneering e-governance solutions, such as Prozorro and Diia, linking their performance to measurable economic outcomes. Approach: We utilised a mixed-methods approach to capture practical evidence. The paper involves comparative analysis to quantify digital transparency, macroeconomic indicators, and qualitative methods, including case studies on implementing digital instruments in the EU and Ukraine's policy-making. Results: Findings confirm a significant role of digital governance transparency in macroeconomic policy design. The study identifies critical economic and administrative bottlenecks in permitting and regulation that digital tools must eliminate. It concludes that existing SG systems have high technical readiness, but suffer from low inter-system integration at the macro-planning level, inhibiting full economic effect. Implications: The study offers several significant implications for the academic community by providing new empirical data detailing the performance of advanced digital governance tools (e.g., Diia, Prozorro) under active large-scale war-crisis and engaged in rapid reconstruction of the economy, establishing new conceptual links between the quality of digital institutions and macroeconomic outcomes, and opening avenues for future research. The conclusion regarding high technical readiness but low inter-system integration highlights a new area for research on the challenges and determinants of seamless data-driven governance policy. Value: The core contribution is establishing a prescriptive, data-driven link between digital governance quality and macroeconomic stability in a unique, crisis-affected context. The paper is original in synthesising a practical instruments of SG solutions specifically tailored to address Ukraine's current fiscal and regulatory recovery challenges.