In English – Voxit Community
Background
The Voxit community is an open source community launched in 2025 with project funding from The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra. Its mission is to systematically make the open source Voxit platform, designed to enable a constructive exchange of opinions around a given topic, available to Finland’s public sector, third sector, and private users, and to ensure that the platform is continuously developed in a transparent, cost-effective, and co-creative manner.
The Voxit community serves as the focal point of Finnish Voxit expertise by bringing together the technical service providers offering the platform and the organisations that use it.
The goals of the Voxit community are to...
Promote open and equal dialogue between citizens, stakeholders, and decision-makers
Provide Voxit as an easy-to-use service for municipalities and other organizations
Ensure that the maintenance and further development of the Voxit platform take place through open collaboration
Build an inclusive community where both technical and non-technical participants can contribute with a low barrier to entry
Promote the use of open-source software as the foundation for public digital services
The guiding principle of the community is that Voxit is equally and openly available to everyone – both commercial and non-profit actors – and that the community does not restrict their activities.
Voxit is based on the Computational Democracy Project’s Pol.is tool, which is open source under the AGPL 3.0 license, but starting in autumn 2025 it will continue as an independent open-source software project governed by the Voxit community. The development of Voxit focuses on addressing the needs of participation and decision-making in Finland and Europe in particular. Outside Finland, the platform is still referred to by its original name, Polis.
Community roles
Community Manager
COSS – The Finnish Centre for Open Systems and Solutions serves as the community manager for Voxit.
The community manager is responsible for ensuring that the operations of the Voxit community and the development of the platform adhere to the principles of openness and good governance, with transparent practices regarding tools, the development model, information security, and the publishing platform. The community manager’s duties also include organizing training for members, maintaining an active peer network, and compiling and maintaining the Voxit knowledge base. The community manager prepares the community’s annual budget and reports on its implementation at regular member meetings.
The community manager ensures that all results of work by the lead architect, developers, and any other contributors and subcontractors of the community are available to the community without restriction under the chosen license, and that all copyrights and other intellectual property rights (including rights to modify and to further transfer/sub-license) in the results of the work of the lead architect, developers, and any other contributors and subcontractors are transferred to the Voxit community.
Lead Architect
The lead architect of the Voxit community is responsible for the technical approval of contributions, as well as the overall architecture and quality control of Voxit. Together with members of the Voxit community, the lead architect prepares the platform’s technical roadmap and feature list, which are approved unanimously by the community’s general assembly.
Members
In the first phase, the new Voxit community, which began its activities in autumn 2025, has sought to involve technology and service providers in order to launch the Voxit service offering in Finland. We are now actively looking to expand the Voxit community, particularly with user organisations from public administration and other relevant actors.
The Voxit community consists of the following types of members:
Municipalities and other public sector organizations (incl. wellbeing services counties)
Third sector organizations
Technology and IT service providers
Funder of the Voxit project (10.3.2025 – 31.8.2026)
Decision-Making
The decision-making authority of the Voxit community rests with the community’s general assembly, except in matters that fall under the responsibility of the community manager or the lead architect. The general assembly makes decisions by majority vote, and each member organization has one vote.
Members of the Voxit community may bring matters for discussion and decision to the general assembly through the community manager. The community manager convenes the general assembly and prepares the meeting agenda after consulting the members.
The general assembly also defines the annual objectives of the Voxit community.
Development and openness
The Voxit community openly maintains the community edition of the platform on GitLab.com. All outputs independently developed by the Voxit community are licensed and made publicly available under the AGPL 3.0 open source license. The lead architect is responsible for approving contributions based on the Voxit roadmap and technical criteria.
Incorporation of Architectural Components and Source Code
The technical approval of the source code is the responsibility of the lead architect appointed by the Voxit community. Approval of contributions requires that they align with Voxit’s product development plan (the Voxit roadmap) and meet technical acceptability criteria (architecture, quality, etc.). Any disputes are resolved by the general meeting of members.
Interested in European cooperation?
We are open to exploring how the various European Polis initiatives could work toward a shared understanding and deeper collaboration – starting from the existing technical foundations, while equally emphasizing community, governance, and practical use.
If you’re interested in discussing potential collaboration opportunities, feel free to contact us at community@voxit.org