Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine: building a digital maturity system for SMEs

The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, the direct beneficiary, needed a way to measure and then raise the digital maturity of Ukrainian SMEs. The work was commissioned through the University of Science, Entrepreneurship and Technologies and delivered by the Centre for Economic Recovery over ten weeks.

Fewer than a third of Ukrainian SMEs actively implement digital technologies, far behind EU levels. The Ministry had the mandate and the policy intent, but no instrument: no agreed definition of what digital maturity means for a Ukrainian small business, no way to establish where a given firm stands, and therefore no basis for choosing which interventions to fund.

Key challenges:

• No shared definition of digital maturity, and so no national baseline to work against
• Without measurement the Ministry could neither target support nor demonstrate whether it had worked
• An instrument aimed at SMEs has to be simple enough for a small firm to complete unaided, yet structured enough to aggregate nationally
• Digital transformation is a core pillar of EU economic policy, so the result had to be legible against European integration requirements

1. Phase I: International benchmarking. We analysed how 16 countries define digital transformation and assess digital maturity, reviewed the instruments other governments use to support SME digitalisation, and from that identified the components that should anchor a Ukrainian model rather than inventing a definition from scratch.
2. Phase II: Building the instrument. We developed a digital maturity matrix covering seven categories – business model, business processes and digital infrastructure, human capital, client interactions, data analytics, cybersecurity and digital ecosystem – broken into 30 subcategories across five levels from basic to expert. A diagnostic questionnaire of 48 questions in nine sections was then built to map directly onto those levels.
3. Phase III: From measurement to policy. On that basis we developed a Digital Maturity Strategy for Ukrainian SMEs setting out 13 interventions across five areas: preparatory and analytical work, education and human capital, promotion of SME digitalisation, consulting and information services, and financial services.

In ten weeks the Ministry received a connected set of instruments rather than a report: a maturity matrix of seven categories and 30 subcategories over five levels, a 48-question diagnostic aligned to it, and a strategy of 13 interventions anchored to the same structure. 

The work then became national policy. The Ministry launched the Digital Maturity Programme for Small and Medium Business, built around a Digital Maturity Matrix and a White Book on digital maturity, with the stated goal that 80% of Ukrainian SMEs form part of the digital economy by 2028. 

The rollout follows the same logic the instrument was designed for. From November 2025 a “Digital Maturity Compass” questionnaire gives each business a free analytical report and a personal roadmap, and completing it is the condition for accessing the programme’s marketplace of vetted IT providers. 2000+ SMEs took part in survey. From March 2026 the aggregated responses produce Ukraine’s first Digital Change Index, letting firms benchmark themselves by sector and region.

• Measure before you strategise. The 13 interventions were built on the same categories as the matrix. That is what makes a strategy testable: each measure attaches to a level a firm can be shown to occupy, rather than to a general ambition to digitalise.
• Instruments outlive documents. Of everything delivered, what scaled was the matrix and the diagnostic, because they generate data. The national programme now gates access to its solutions marketplace on completing the questionnaire – which turns a voluntary self-assessment into the entry point of the whole system, and the strategy into something that can be checked against evidence.