This week, the number of followers of the Saeima’s profile on Twitter - @Jekaba11 - reached 5,000. Since the new website of the Saeima was launched in 2010, the number of people visiting the website of the Saeima or its profiles on social networks has increased significantly.

By following Saeima’s account on Twitter one can rapidly and easily acquire the latest news about the Saeima, namely, news about the committee meetings, decisions adopted during plenary sittings, events and conferences held at the Saeima; one can also receive rapid responses to questions regarding the work of the Saeima. The website of the Saeima has been visited more than 33,000 times by clicking on links included in tweets on the Twitter website.

The photo-sharing website Flickr contains more than 9,000 photos from plenary sittings, committee meetings, various events, conferences and meetings, as well as portraits of MPs and photos of the architecture and interior of the main building of the Saeima. Pictures on Saeima’s Flickr profile have been viewed more than 88,000 times. The greatest interest has been expressed in photos taken during the Job Shadow Day at the Saeima and the Youth Parliament; furthermore, many viewers are interested in photos featuring the architecture and interior of the main building of the Saeima.

Saeima’s channel on YouTube currently contains more than 480 videos which are also posted on news portals and other websites. The most popular video on the Saeima’s YouTube channel features the ceremonial sitting of the Saeima held on 4 May 2010.

Since 2010, the new website of the Saeima has had more than 753,000 visitors; 260,000 of them were first-time visitors. The website was viewed the most on 2 June 2011, which was the day when the President of Latvia was elected. On ordinary days, the most popular sections of the website are the ones containing press releases, as well as audio and video recordings. Many visitors take advantage of the opportunity to watch online plenary sittings, as well as conferences and discussions held at the Saeima.

Now it is easy to keep up with the latest news posted on the website with RSS. RSS collects the most recent information concerning one’s area of interest – press releases, information on committee meetings and plenary sittings, meetings and visits, or Speaker’s headlines – from Internet sources or portals and stores them. An updated and modernised version of the database of parliamentary documents enables one to view documents easily and quickly.

This year the website was supplemented with a new Easy to Read section, which provides information about the parliament in simple language for people who have problems in understanding regular texts.

 


Saeima Press Service