Records of military property can now be kept digitally – Ukraine's Defence Ministry

Ukraine's Defence Ministry is creating a possibility to keep electronic military property logs instead of paper ones.

Source: Ukraine's Defence Ministry

Details: The ministry has announced amendments to Order No. 440 On the Approval of the Instruction on Accounting for Military Property in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Kateryna Chernohorenko, Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Defence for Digital Development, Digital Transformation and Digitalisation, noted that an average company commander currently spends 50-80% of his working time on bureaucracy.

"Property accounting is one of the most voluminous bureaucratic processes. The order creates opportunities for automation," she said.

From now on, military units will be able to keep accounting registers and auxiliary documents (property journals) only in electronic form, using software that has been approved by the Ministry of Defence or approved for trial operation. In the second case, the software must comply with all information security requirements (have a certificate of compliance with the Comprehensive information security system).

One example of such a programme is SAP, the automated defence resource management system. It is the world's leading logistics system used by 28 NATO countries, the Defence Ministry explained.

In order to transition to such software, commanders or chiefs of military units that manage their internal military economy need to issue an order to use it.

In the case of the transition, only electronic records remain, and it is prohibited to keep paper journals and duplicate information.

Before the transition, it is possible to keep records of property in other programmes without separate permission – for example, Microsoft Office 365. However, in this case, the Ministry said it is unnecessary to print all pages of the accounting journals but rather to occasionally sign a summary statement during verifications.

Any questions regarding the order or the transition to electronic form can be addressed to the Ministry of Defence's hotline by calling 1512.

At the same time, the Defence Ministry stressed that primary documents (invoices, claims, acts, certificates) remain in paper form for the time being "because they confirm the performance of business transactions and may be required during inspections or official investigations".

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