Military personnel have found it easier to write and submit reports

Without exception, all military personnel who encountered the UPA (Ukrainian Paper Army) in the AFU note excessive regulation in the sphere of bureaucracy. A separate line in the bureaucratisation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces includes reports - the key form of paperwork in the army.

This includes the difficulty of submitting reports to military personnel who serve at ground zero and have no way to type a report on a computer and print it on a printer.

It is hard for people outside the military to imagine that a significant portion of battalion-level chiefs of staff or brigade-level chiefs of formation, i.e., from captain to lieutenant colonel in rank, literally measure with a ruler the margins, distances, and margins in submitted reports.

A deviation of even a millimetre from the "standard" serves as a reason to return the report without consideration. A technical error of even one letter can also serve as a reason to return the report. This is still understandable in peacetime, but the continuation of this practice even in the second year of the war has raised a lot of questions about the priorities of the staffs.

According to a study by the Department of Digital Transformation, it turned out that 60% of the military respondents considered the digitalisation of reports to be one of the most necessary steps. This is especially true for the military, who are on the ground most of the time, for whom it is quite problematic to type a report on a computer and print it out on a printer with all the "standards and requirements" of the formation part of the headquarters.

Yesterday the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine issued an Order facilitating the writing of reports. In addition, the same Order introduces electronic reports. Among other things, the Order of the Ministry of Defence prohibits:

1) impose any other requirements regarding the form and content of a paper report not provided for in this Order, including:

• submitting reports on individual issues exclusively handwritten or typewritten;
• failure to comply with the requirements for the size of margins, indents, fonts, colour of ink or printing, size and quality of paper, etc., which are not provided for in this Procedure;
• presence of grammatical, syntactic or other errors that do not affect the essence of the report;

According to experts, this is a revolution in the bureaucratic machine of the AFU. Of course, the fate of any best law does not guarantee its implementation on the ground, but at least a start has been made. At least the military has a point of support.

But still the real revolution will be the optimisation of work with the Journals, which in each unit starting from platoon there are a dozen at least.

We shall remind you that on 8 August Ukraine launched a mobile application "Army+", thanks to which servicemen will be able to submit reports electronically