MyVoice

Non-governmental and non-profit organization “Sabiedrības Līdzdalības Fonds” aka MyVoice, founded in 2011, works in the field of digital democracy and public engagement. MyVoice mission is to develop and promote digital tools for better civic participation in decision making processes. Under the MyVoice brand, the globally recognised platform ManaBalss.lv, as well as other civic engagement tools like Open2Vote.eu, Lemejs.lv and OpenSaeima.lv are being developed and maintained.

The organization’s mission is to create and strengthen the digital democracy ecosystem in Latvia and the world. Behind this mission are essential elements, such as the security and sustainability of humanity, inclusive power, and participatory society. This is how we see the Latvia of the future and the world of the future. These are not “just words” – our daily work and every project we implement are purposefully subordinated to these long-term goals and mission. One of the organization’s long-term goals is to increase the capacity of public participation in decision-making processes. Our goals also include mobilizing various public resources for effective governance and transferring Latvia’s public digital participation experience internationally.

The biggest challenge for the organization is to involve politically and socially passive citizens in civic activities. When developing new digital tools and improving existing ones, we always think about whether it will be interesting for every inhabitant of Latvia to use them and how we can encourage people to use them more and more actively.

Find more information on our civic IT tools here.

According to our existing information, ManaBalss.lv is the most successful platform for citizens of digital democracy worldwide. It is recognized as an open government success story globally, mentioned by then-US President Obama and featured in the New York Times and The Guardian, as well as recognized as a success story by organisations like OECD, UN, European Commission, European Parliament. We are currently working actively with Ukraine and North Macedonia, looking forward to establish cooperation in other countries.

Our history

2010

The portal was created by two enthusiastic young people – Kristofers Blaus and Jānis Erts. They both thought that good ideas should not be at the home at the kitchen table – they must get to decision-makers and even further. In 2010, work on the creation of the portal began.

2011

In June 2011, the new ManaBalss.lv portal initially contained only two initiatives – “open offshors” and “open the Saeima!”. Several hundred signatures were collected in the first hours of the portal. Two days later, President of Latvia turned to the public with a call for the signing of initiatives.

2014

ManaBalss.lv is now in two languages! In order to promote the involvement of Latvian public society in democratic processes and to facilitate as many people as possible both the submission of initiatives and the process of signing initiatives, a version of the platform in Russian is launched.

2017

The first version of the digital platform ParVaiPret.lv is transferred to the public assessment. The platform was created to promote a link between the decision-making authority and the public, offering a wider audience to respond to questions decided by the Saeima.

2018

The launch of the Lemejs.lv digital participation platform, which offers organisations a single tool that combines both the questionnaire fuction and the co-decision function – to make suggestions, to discuss other proposals, and to create smaller groups to vote together on different issues.

2020

At the beginning of the year, we are actively working on the unifying homepage of the organisation of MyVoice, which will unite and provide information on all the tools offered by MyVoice.

2020

The range of team projects is supplemented by two large projects – “Development of an automated CSO participation system” and “Open data for civic participation”.

2021

The 2020 European Citizen’s Prize has been awarded to the ManaBalss platform.

2021

The ManaBalss project is included in the final of the World Justice Challenge 2021.

2022

The ManaBalss.lv platform has been chosen as an excellent example in the promotion of e-democracy and presented at the World Forum for Democracy 2022 in Strasbourg.