Ukrainian IT volunteering movement: clusters and incubators supporting the Army and civic people
Software development in Ukraine has been gaining more and more popularity occupying all the spheres of daily life. Ukrainian IT sector is amidst the world’s largest ones. The industry development can hardly be overestimated since numerous applications and technical inventions have been widely used. Volunteer IT projects have greatly contributed to the support of Ukraine’s army owing to unselfish devotion and desire to protect from the war break out to the rest of the country’s territory. Since the occupied territory of Donbas region is claimed to be “a frozen conflict zone” the best minds of the country do not seem to surrender alongside with the fighters out there in the east. We would like to dwell upon the matter in our series of articles and provide you with the info on the most outstanding and successfully functioning national projects.
“B-incubator”
The child of Oleksandr Olshanskyy, “B-incubator” is aiming at combining the knowledge of the experienced military men and young programmers in order to create interesting and useful project that would help the Ukrainian soldiers in the east to foresee the actions of the pro-Russian separatists and reduce the number of deaths. The military sphere has a significant value on the global arena. And the main idea of “B-incubator” is to reveal the products having value for commercial and military sectors. For instance, one of the technical issues is the camera with analytical block able to recognize faces and count the number of people. This would help to avoid watching Gigabytes of video traffic since it can easily identify larger crowds and their relocations. The same useful purpose is observed from the cameras with car’s registration number recognition. If these cameras are to be installed at the block-posts of Ukraine’s military men, the suspicious vehicles would be immediately included in the unified register. The adaptation of the hardware into the military area is expected to bridge the defense departments, volunteers, and constructors, so, to help the Ukrainian armed forces with the IT forces.
“Army SOS”
“Army SOS” is the volunteer organization providing full-stack support to Ukraine’s Armed forces. This support includes the purchase of ammunition, protection, communications and intelligence items, food and uniform, delivering them to the position and passing to the soldiers. One of its main pride is the application allowing the artillery to shoot more accurately and quickly. Previously a commander before the opening fire had to make measurements on paper for 10 minutes, however, now the program does instead of him within 2 minutes, including ballistic corrections and weather conditions.
"Network cluster of high technology"
The next step for the cohesion of volunteerism and different (including - and technical) initiatives and the association were the creation of the technology clusters. To increase the country's defense by the dual application developments and scientific inventions, a group of private companies in the IT sector and experts decided to unite into a public organization called "Network cluster of high technology." Yevhen Utkin, the President of KM Core and initiator of the cluster, speaks out that the military conflict in the country encouraged the state and private companies to cooperation in the hi-tech sphere as to improve the defensive potential. For this purpose, Ukraine needs new dual-use technologies, especially those that can serve after the military conflict can be used in civilian life and Eastern Ukraine infrastructure rebuilding. The main objective of the cluster is the coordination of interaction between companies and entrepreneurs, ministries and agencies in developing defense startups, devices and software products; as well as control over the interaction with financial institutions and donors, including venture capital investors into the defense projects. The service team UA.RPA. was established to support the cluster. It is headed by admiral and former Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Ihor Kabanenko.
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