Update from Lithuania

parasykjiems

In Lithuania in the meantime Darius Damalakas is working on launching the beta version of parasykjiems.lt, site which was tested for the last few weeks:

“This week we will launch the site in beta, meaning that people will be able to send emails directly to their representatives. Currently all emails were sent to our own private email box for testing purposes, but it will change this week.”

KąVeikiaValdžia.lt Policy Feed has also experienced a small change. According to their blog, Emilis and the team decided to simplify the design of the main page after last year’s experiment:

“It used to be KąVeikiaValdžia.lt was greeting visitors with an enormous list of newest published documents by Seimas (Parliament), Government and an assortment of Municipal press offices. This was very well indicative of the resources the database contains – more than 20 thousand of them – but it was too daunting for a first time visitors who still make a significant portion of web site traffic. The list itself wasn’t that bad – it was the original names of documents that one really needs to get used to.

Late last year a different approach was experimented with – that of a fairly minimal front page with a prominent search field and links to preformed sample queries on the most popular topics: Presidential affairs, Ministry of Education, some municipalities and several politicians.”

It’s great to see the team pronouncing the very essence of successful projects, something we strongly advocate too:

“Simplicity proves itself as a good entrance to complex systems.”

Have a look at the current design and let the developers know what you think. They ask you for feedback and even better ideas!