How Kyiv Reimagined City-as-a-Service
Pairing Leadership, Culture, and PaaS Can Be a Catalyst for Lasting Transformation
Digital transformation in city government is too often framed around efficiency and modernisation. Speaking with a team of innovators who have built and scaled a City-as-a-Service platform under extraordinary conditions, has made me reflect on what resilience in city technology truly means.
I've had some great conversations lately with Oleg, Oleks, Anatolii, and Denys at MISTO. While my own work at City of Hobart was far removed from such extreme pressures, it is pretty clear that the core challenges of urban digitalisation remain strikingly similar.
Cities worldwide are caught between the promise of digital transformation and the stubborn realities of municipal governance. While technology has never been more advanced, many city systems remain fragmented, slow to adapt, and disconnected from the people they serve.
Even well-resourced global megacities struggle to modernise effectively, while mid-sized and smaller cities often lack the capacity to take full advantage of digital opportunities. The challenge isn’t just about adopting new technology, that’s part of the problem. The challenge is in rethinking how cities operate in an increasingly digital world.
Kyiv Digital is the official app of the Kyiv city government. It has over three million users and stands as one of the strongest proofs of concept for how a smart city platform can function at scale.
MISTO shares some of the same team DNA. It is a distinct and independent City-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform, first launched in Odesa, and now being expanded across other Ukrainian cities.
Emerging from the crucible of crisis in Ukraine, it represents a new phase of city platform innovation. One shaped by resilience, adaptability, and the practical realities of distributed municipal transformation.
The technical challenges MISTO addresses are not unique to Ukrainian cities. They reflect the same six architectural imperatives I explored in Building Tomorrow: surging demand, information dissemination, disrupted supply chains, increased remote operations, uncontrolled escalation, and heightened exploitation.
So in that respect, MISTO, and those experiences drawn from the Kyiv Digital program, is a model for what a modern city platform should be capable of delivering anywhere in the world.
Reflecting on my time at the City of Hobart between 2018 and 2021, I see clear parallels in the underlying constraints for transformation. Hobart was not in a warzone, but the technical challenges were equally present. Siloed data, fragmented services, and a lack of a unified digital experience for citizens created friction between city departments and the people they served.
Yet, a critical difference also lies in the role of leadership. In Kyiv, the mayor is the biggest champion and primary client of the city's digital transformation, driving its adoption from the top down. In Hobart, as in many other cities, the mayor holds a more representative position, with authority distributed across the council. This structural difference changes the speed and direction of transformation. Where Kyiv could push through a unified vision, cities like Hobart must navigate consensus-driven governance, which often leads to slower, more fragmented change.
This raises an important question: Is governance structure the key driver of change, or is it culture? I think governance structures shape the process of transformation, but culture determines its pace and depth. A centralised leader can push change quickly, but only if the institutional culture supports it. Likewise, in a distributed governance model, progress may be slow unless there is an ingrained culture of adaptability and digital ambition.
In Kyiv, the urgency created first by the pandemic and then by war fostered a culture where rapid, decisive action was necessary and expected. The mayor’s strong leadership aligned with this need, enabling bold, top-down decision-making that could be implemented at scale. In contrast, cities like Hobart operate within a culture of deliberation and shared governance. Even when there is recognition of the need for change, implementation happens in a piecemeal fashion, shaped by the slow-moving realities of municipal decision-making. At the same time, technology itself plays a role in shaping what is possible.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology has emerged as the right architecture at the right time, allowing cities to move away from rigid, monolithic systems and toward scalable, adaptable solutions. Unlike traditional software deployments, which require heavy customization and infrastructure investment, PaaS enables municipalities to rapidly implement new capabilities while maintaining flexibility for future needs. This approach aligns well with both centralized and distributed governance models, offering cities the ability to adopt and evolve digital services at their own pace.
When paired with the right leadership and culture, PaaS can become a catalyst for lasting transformation rather than just another layer of municipal complexity.
A City-as-a-Service platform must be scalable and adaptable, capable of serving both large metropolitan areas and smaller urban environments. Service design plays a crucial role in ensuring flexibility, and any city platform must be structured in a way that allows seamless integration with local governance models and regulations.
In real life, cities also do not operate as monolithic entities; they are networks of neighborhoods, districts, and services that must function together. Even in little old Hobart we had 13 distinct neighbourhoods with competing challenges, stakeholders and sponsor groups. Yet, one of the biggest challenges is not a lack of technology solutions. It is that there are too many of them. Cities are overloaded with fragmented applications for transport, parking, housing, economic development, tourism, and security, all managed by different departments or vendors who often operate in silos.
This complexity is exactly why a PaaS-based approach is so critical. Rather than requiring citizens to navigate the bureaucratic mess of which agency manages what, a PaaS model abstracts the integration layer, enabling seamless access to multiple services through a single pane of glass.
Whether a resident is checking public transport schedules, applying for a business permit, paying utility bills, or seeking shelter, they shouldn’t have to think about which department is responsible. They should just be able to get what they need in one place.
The potential extends beyond public services. Private sector collaborations can further enhance the experience, particularly in expanding into "cities within cities." Large housing developments, corporate campuses, and even private urban districts can operate as extensions of a municipal service network, offering services that integrate smoothly with the city's broader infrastructure. This approach creates a true ecosystem of services that work together rather than competing for attention.
Another critical consideration is how citizens interact with these platforms. Too often, government services require residents to navigate layers of bureaucracy just to access simple functions. The power of a PaaS-based city platform is in its ability to simplify this complexity by creating a unified interface across multiple agencies and services.
A resident shouldn’t need to decipher the difference between municipal and regional transit authorities, nor should they care whether business permitting and economic development fall under different agencies. With the rise of Digital Public Infrastructure in every modern country, identity verification and payment systems are already in place. Yet cities continue to operate as disconnected bureaucracies. A well-designed PaaS-based solution removes these barriers, abstracting the complexity of governance so that citizens can access the services they need without ever thinking about the silos behind them.
The idea of an Agentic AI concierge model, where AI-driven services anticipate citizen needs rather than requiring manual searches, could completely transform how people engage with their local governments. This is not something MISTO has fully implemented yet, but given their connections with Microsoft and ServiceNow it is a direction worth pursuing. If the future of digital services is in automation and proactive assistance, then cities must rethink their approach to citizen engagement, ensuring that services are personalised, accessible, and frictionless.
Of course, one of the greatest obstacles to any city platform is the issue of data silos. Cities rely on GIS and increasingly, IoT networks, digital twins and other operational technologies to map and manage their infrastructure, but these systems often exist in isolation.
Departmental territorialism leads to fragmented information, creating inefficiencies and friction. In Hobart, I saw firsthand how different city- and state departments maintained control over their datasets, resisting integration efforts. A truly effective City-as-a-Service platform must break down these barriers, ensuring that municipal data flows seamlessly across agencies. Without this, even the most advanced digital infrastructure will struggle to deliver real impact.
Beyond efficiency, the question of resilience is unavoidable.
Kyiv Digital has been tested under conditions that no city should ever have to endure. Like most of us, the pandemic pushed its digital service delivery to the limits, but then the war in Ukraine forced an urgent redesign of how a city operates under extreme duress.
It has shown that a modern city platform must be built for resilience from the outset, capable of functioning in scenarios where traditional infrastructure is compromised. This means integrating geo-located emergency notifications, blackout-resistant messaging, and predictive analytics that can simulate crisis scenarios, whether this is wildfires in California or severe storms in Australia. These capabilities are not luxuries; they are essential for cities facing an increasingly uncertain future.
MISTO therefore, is well-positioned for broader adoption, but it is also part of a much larger global shift. Around the world, government technology spending is accelerating, and cities are looking for scalable solutions that can modernise service delivery without the burden of building bespoke digital ecosystems from scratch.
The United States alone has tens of thousands of small and mid-sized municipalities, many of which lack the expertise or funding to develop their own platforms. The European Union presents another layer of complexity, with 25 official languages and fragmented governance structures. Australia and Asia offer different challenges and opportunities again. The need for a scalable, flexible City-as-a-Service model is not just theoretical. It is becoming an essential part of the next wave of urban digital transformation.
The Ukrainian examples are proof that digital transformation happens when vision, urgency, and the right technology align. They certainly serves as a vision for what modern digitally supported cities can be, but more importantly, as evidence that change is possible when leadership, culture, and technology move in unison.
They are also a blueprint for a future where municipal services, whatever they are, are not just digital but adaptive, resilient, and truly citizen-centric. During my time in Hobart, we often talked about digital transformation, but too often, it remained just that. The ambition was there, and we even won awards for our strategies. But ambition alone doesn’t create change. Ideas stalled in the face of fragmented governance, competing priorities, and the inertia of legacy systems.
I guess the big question is, what does a resilient city really mean? For most municipalities that comes down to a political vote. But in Ukraine, resilience isn’t a strategic buzzword. It is something far greater.
When cities must function under siege, their digital infrastructure isn’t just about efficiency or modernisation. It becomes the backbone of civic endurance. By contrast, the everyday governance challenges in peaceful cities, things like bureaucratic gridlock, political debates, and slow-moving transformation, suddenly seem so small.