Developing Electronic Sources of Information on the Population in the Wartime

Abstract

The development of information technologies has significantly enhanced the capacities of complex systems for collection, storage, processing, and use of information. In the recent decades, large volumes of structured data accumulated by official power bodies have been stored in databases and registers, the data on the country population obviously being the largest information arrays. Hence, the electronic information resources containing such data can be considered as a priority source for obtaining population data. However, the applicability of these resources is degraded by several problems, one of them being absence of a single identifier of a physical person, which could have allowed one to combine easily data from various registers. Electronic information resources in Ukraine have shown a steadily upward dynamics, especially remarkable in several recent years, but its vector has changed under the impact of the war: the regulatory framework has been subject to amendments pertaining to the existing registers, databases and systems, and a series of new ones launched, most of which have no foreign analogues. It raises the importance of an analysis of the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war on creating the system of electronic registers containing population data, and the capability of this system to provide information for demographic research. The article’s objective is to trace the evolution of public electronic registers containing data on the population; to sum up innovations in this field caused by the war context; to explore the applicability of this information base for demographic analysis and assessment of demographic losses. The amendments are examined, made after the large-scale Russian invasion in the Unified State Demographic Register, Registers of Territorial Communities, the State Register of Individuals – Taxpayers, Register of Insured Persons of the State Register of Compulsory State Social Insurance, Unified Information Database of Internally Displaced Persons, Central Database of the Electronic Health Care System (eHealth), Register of Providers and Beneficiaries of Social Services, Data Bank on Orphans and Children Deprived of Parental Care of the Unified Information and Analytical System “Dity”, Integrated Interagency Information and Communication System for Monitoring Persons, Vehicles, and Cargo Crossing the State Border (“Arkan”), Unified State Register of Conscripts, Persons Liable for Military Service, and Reservists “Oberih”, and some others. Another category of examined registers are ones which creation is caused by the large-scale war: Unified State Register of Military Personnel, Information System for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Unified Register of Persons in Respect of Whom the Fact of Deprivation of Personal Liberty as a Result of Armed Aggression Against Ukraine Has Been Established, Register of Information on Children Deported or Forcibly Displaced in Connection with the Armed Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The necessity for real data on the number of the population for effective reconstruction of Ukraine, and for estimating the losses caused by the Russian aggression is emphasized