Citizen Brief No. 2: Sri Lanka's Debt, as of March 2024 

July 2024

Citizen Brief No.1 : Sri Lanka's Active Military per 1000 Population, Compared to Neighboring Countries

June 2024

Sponsored by IT industry professionals, the Direct Democracy Initiative is an unofficial people's e-referendum solution based on SMS -- a baby step toward a Swiss-style direct democracy where important policy decisions are made directly by citizens' vote, rather than by elected representatives. The solution is still in beta, but all your votes count! Please send in your vote (issue code followed by "yes" or "no") to 0767 001 001. 

Update on 024/01/20: first live poll here: Online Safety Bill (2024)

Why SMS?

Online internet polls are trivially manipulated by bots. Phone or in-person polls are prone to sampling error or conscious/subconscious bias by the pollster. Allowing only one SMS per subscriber greatly reduces vote stuffing, and the choice to participate belongs to the public (pollster does not choose the sample).

Why a referendum?

We never ask about politicians, parties or sensitive opinions, only policy topics that you already discuss openly online. This allows us to use regular SMS without having to implement complicated digital anonymisation solutions.

Data privacy

This is a Dialog Marketplace solution. Raw data is protected by telecom provider privacy policy. Tabulation data is deleted at the conclusion of each poll. Data will never be shared with third parties.