Are you tired of potholes? Wanna do something about it? If you live in the UK you can report your local pothole at potholes.co.uk.

The site is run by an independent organization supported by an insurancecompany.  The aim of the site is to make the problem visble on a national scale hoping they willl be able to awake political action on the issue.

But the site is not a typical protest site. It can be used by the motorists not only to report portholes but also to give them a view of potholes in their local areas. You can see all potholes on a map. You have to look them up on the map, cant download info to your GPS (maybe an idea fo next gen potholesites).

The site is a very good example of tranparency using social networks to gather informatiom and to publish the same information in an infomative way usefull for motorists and road authorities as well as sending a clear signal to the local politicians.

Tim O’reilly (@timoreilly) has written an article telling why he loves Twitter.

His 5 reasons for loving twitter are

• Twitter is simple – does one small thing and does it well.
• Twitter works like people do – you can follow first and become “friends” later.
• Twitter cooperates well with others – Integreates well with others services.
• Twitter transcends the web – Can be used on any client without loss of functionality.
• Twitter evolves quickly – many new users, many new ways to use it.

Read the full article at O’reilly Radar.

“Broadband for All May Not Be as Urgent as Many Say” says analyst at Gartner Andrea DiMaio. He argues that investments in services should follow any big investment in infrastructure.  He concludes that the current emphasis on building infrastructure is only promoting the entertainment-services not the public services that would justify the large public investments.

In a comment to the article I have argued that the emphasis on building infrastructure is still important since this is the a basis for all digital communication.

The City of Copenhagen has announced that 3 of their 31 public toilets now accepts payment by SMS. A visit to the toilets costs 2 kroner and finding a coin when needed sometimes seems to be a problem for the users.

Paying with you phone is easy. You just send a SMS and the door opens. Simple, effective and a great way to use the technology.

And If you’ re bored while in the toilet, you might find inspiration in iPoo, yet another program for your iphone for killing som time online.

The first time I tried twitter more than a year ago when a friend od mine told me about this new thing. We both twitted sending messages to eachother. After a while we stopped unable to see any use for this crazy program.

A couple of weeks ago I finally understood how usefull twitter could be. I was at a conference where twitter was used during the conference to comment and to ask questions. I was quite fascinated be the activity I saw on twitter during the conference and was very inspired by the debate in the room as well as the debate on twitter.  During the conference questions from twitter was presented to the contributors and they would answer.

A couple days later I was able to follow another conference using twitter. The conference was in Barcelona and the sound was streamed over the internet. This meant that I could follow the debate online and on twitter at the same time. It was like being there!

Since then I have used twitter every day. I have learned to use the search-function and have started folowing som of the facinating people found on twitter.

Find inspiration on how to use twitter on conferences at

• Meetingspodcast
• Twitip

Betty is employed by the the City of Frederiksberg. She has been working for Frederiksberg for a year now, most of the time working on the main web-site, www.frederiksberg.dk, but lately she is also working in the callcenter answering questions on the phone.

The book State of the eUnion: Government 2.0 and Onwards was released as a PDF-version for download.

Read about Goverment2.0. Learn what it is and read about the contributors view on goverment2.0 and the current status.

PDF-version can be found at 21.gov.net web-site.

On nov. 17 local elections for members of the 98 municipality boards were elected in Denmark. Alle citizens aged 18 and above was invited to vote for their favorite candidates in the municipalities and in the regional government.

This year a initiative involving 31 municipalities held a youth election for youths aged 16 to 18. They were invited to vote too using a web-platform. This special  election was only used to indicate the involment if this agegroup, the vote didn’t have any influence on the real elections.

The idea behind the test-election was to tell young people about democracy and politics in the municipalities and to to let them ask questions and give advice to the local politicians.

In the municipality of Frederiksberg 29,8 % of the youths chose to vote. The percentage was lower in the rest of the municipalities.  This has caused the media to call the experiment at failure. But considering that 20-30% percent of the youth has spent time to be involved in the local politics, I would call it a success and a very good initiative.

The platform used to vote was from Assembly voting. Eash municipality had a campaignsite based on webnode (e.g. City of Frederiksberg)  and a group on facebook.

Every year since 2001 the National Danish IT and Telecom Agency has evaluated and benchmarked the quality of public websites.

In 2009, the project “Bedst på Nettet” (Top of the Web) examines around 600 public websites. Websites and their digital services are checked for navigation, usability, and utility value. User satisfaction monitoring is employed and the public website owners are asked to evaluate their own strategies and work behind the websites.

 Every year awards are presented for the best public websites. The nominees represents the best danish public web-sites and this years nominees are:

National goverment institutions

• Erhvervs- og Byggestyrelsen (www.ebst.dk)
• Undervisningsministeriet (www.uvm.dk)
• Klima- og Energiministeriet (www.kemin.dk)
• Servicestyrelsen (www.servicestyrelsen.dk)
• Skov- og Naturstyrelsen (www.skovognatur.dk)

Regional and municipality

• Odder Kommune (www.odder.dk)
• Gladsaxe Kommune (www.gladsaxe.dk)
• Gentofte Kommune (www.gentofte.dk)
• Vejen Kommune (www.vejenkom.dk)
• Lejre Kommune (www.lejre.dk)

Education- and researchinstitutions

• NFA – Det Nationale Forskningscenter for Arbejdsmiljø (www.arbejdsmiljoforskning.dk)
• Videns- og Forskningscenter for Alternativ Behandling (www.vifab.dk)
• Viborg Katedralskole (www.viborgkatedralskole.dk)
• Copenhagen Business School (www.cbs.dk)
• Ingeniørhøjskolen i Århus (www.iha.dk)

Portals

• Boligejer.dk (Erhvervs- og Byggestyrelsen)
• Startvaekst.dk (Erhvervs- og Byggestyrelsen)
• Arbejdsmiljoviden.dk (Videncenter for Arbejdsmiljø)
• Virk.dk (Erhvervs- og Selskabsstyrelsen)
• Altomkost.dk (Fødevarestyrelsen)
• Borger.dk (IT- og Telestyrelsen)

Culture institutions

• Tøjhusmuseet (www.thm.dk)
• Esbjerg Kommunes Biblioteker (www.esbbib.dk)
• Stevns Bibliotekerne (www.bibliotek.stevns.dk)
• Ringkøbing-Skjern Bibliotekerne (www.riskbib.dk)
• Århus Kommunes Biblioteker (www.aakb.dk)

Healthcare institutions

• Hulegården (www.hulegaarden.dk)
• Pensionat Kamager (www.kamager.dk)
• Center for Oligofrenipsykiatri, Århus Universitetshospital, Risskov (www.oligo.dk)
• Hillerød Hospital (www.hillerodhospital.dk)
•  Sygehus Thy-Mors (www.sygehusthymors.rn.dk)

Other

• Center for frivilligt socialt arbejde (www.frivillighed.dk)
• ATP (www.atp.dk)
• Danmarks Evalueringsinstitut (www.eva.dk)
• Dansk Center for Undervisningsmiljø (www.dcum.dk)
• Statsforvaltningerne (www.statsforvaltning.dk)
• Landsskatteretten (www.landsskatteretten.dk)

Bedst på nettet