Failure in Diia, missing documents, withdrawal of candidacy and other “tragedies” of the Eurovision Song Contest 2024

On Saturday evening, the Diia app temporarily stopped functioning during the voting for Ukraine’s representative at the Eurovision Song Contest.

The voting was eventually extended until 19:00 on February 4, and Diia resumed its work, but users continued to report either difficulties with access or loss of documents, and social media was flooded with memes and outrage.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Innovation Mikhail Fedorov explained the situation by overloading the app due to the large number of requests and promised to fix the situation.

Some users were outraged that Diya had previously been offered as a voting tool in elections.

“Surely no one could have thought that Diya would not withstand the overload and would ‘fall down’? “What a great idea! So what if we have elections in Diia there too?” wrote Anastasia Bondarenko in a comment on the app’s Facebook page.

“The much-hyped “Diia” does not work… And these people tried to sell electronic elections to the society. The only successful thing that has been used for several years to cover up catastrophic failures in various areas turned out to be a flop,” MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze wrote on Facebook.

Due to the failure, one of the participants withdrew her candidacy

Singer SKYLERR, who was performing at number 8 with the song Time is running out, announced her withdrawal due to a voting failure in the

She wrote about this on Instagram.

“This decision was difficult for me, but still, I’m about creativity, about music, about the stage, about shows, about work, about song, about MY people, about you, about all of us. Everything that is happening now is not about the above, and not about me. Unfortunately, the vote in the moment cannot be returned, and I trust the moment,” the singer wrote.

According to SKYLERR, due to a malfunction in the Diia app, the votes could have been counted incorrectly.

“I understand that it’s a big system, it’s a malfunction, and everyone has the same conditions, but again, I’m in favor of transparent and clear voting that is in the moment. I am not interested in participating in this PR race that has developed because of this situation,” emphasized the National Selection contestant.

How the government explains the situation

Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Ministry of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, who is responsible for digitalization in the government, tried to explain the situation.

“Today was a record number of users in Diia in the history of the project. Instead of 800 requests per second, as it was during the voting last year, we had 15,000 requests,” he wrote on Facebook.

According to him, to ensure stable operation, Diia increased its capacity by 5 times compared to last year, but the number of requests was 20 times higher, which led to overload.

“I apologize for this situation. We will make a detailed analysis and implement organizational changes to be ready for similar traffic waves,” Fedorov promised.

“This year, Diia gave us the opportunity to cheer for our favorites for a day longer and create dozens of memes. This will not happen next year,” he said.

However, after Diia was restored, a number of users reported that their documents disappeared from the app after the incident.

“Some of my documents have disappeared from the Diia app: two passports, a driver’s license, and a coupon. Is it because I don’t like Eurovision?” – Forbes journalist Yuriy Tarasovsky wrote on Facebook.

“Please remain calm. The team is making every effort to resolve this situation as soon as possible. We ask you to use the app services a little later,” the Diia team responds to such requests.

But not all users have lost their documents. A BBC Ukraine journalist managed to gain access to her own documents in Diia and take part in the voting for Ukraine’s representative at the Eurovision Song Contest.

“The sign language interpreters won me over”

Since many users were initially unable to vote, social media started offering to give the victory to sign language interpreters who would interpret the songs with dance moves.

“Another undisputed contender for the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 is Kateryna Zabotkina, a sign language interpreter, who is definitely a star today! If it were possible to vote for her, I would give her my vote!” Natalia Didukh wrote on Facebook.

“The girls Olga Bunazov and Kateryna Zabotkina definitely won me over!!! In a show where there was a huge fiasco with the audience vote, the sign language interpreters became the main stars of the show for me!” Dmytro Nagorny wrote on Facebook.

The selection process involved sign language interpreters Kateryna Zabotkina and Olga Bunaziv, who post videos of Ukrainian songs with sign language interpretation on social media.

Singers Jerry Heil and Alyona Alyona are among the contenders to represent Ukraine at the song contest