The National Public Toilet Map

The National Public Toilet Map just seems to be one of those off the wall ideas, lets build a website that helps people find public toilets. Most people would of thought it was a crazy idea, but somebody had the gumption to stick to their guns and this website was created. There are a number of people that would really find this website useful and it is good for raising awareness of the National Continence Management Strategy. I was just surprised I did not know how many and the location of public toilet near my office.

So is it Web 2.0 , well it has a the trip planner and you can create your My Toilet Map. It makes good use of maps. Though I find Where Is a little clunky compared to Google Maps in my opinion, but it does the job.

Add user ratings and comments and you would have a fully fledged Web2.0 app. Still this was a surprising find, I never expect to find such a well developed web app from a government site on a low key but important

Hat tip to the Questacon blog

HREOC listening tour blog

Now this is your traditional blog, running on WordPress and allowing comments to promote the Listening Tour of the HREOC Commissioner Broderick as she travels around Australia and to gather your feedback on the direction HREOC should take over the next five years. The comments are moderated as expected and are governed by an acceptable use policy. A couple of the more interesting conditions are:

• do protect your personal privacy and that of others by not including personal information of about yourself or about others in your posts to the blog, (such as names, email addresses, private addresses or phone numbers);

• do represent your own views and not impersonate or falsely represent any other person;

Overall a positive use of a blog to interact with their audience.

What I found interesting was while the blog and main HREOC site look identical they have different domain names and hosting half a world apart. The blog’s domain name is hreocblog.com and hosted on a commercial provider in the US. While www.humanrights.gov.au is hosted in Australia, probably inhouse. This does not surprise me, I know of more that a few Government IT departments that are unwilling to host a blog inhouse because of security fears(ie fear of the unknown), lack of skills and/or knowledge or just because it is easier to say NO. It also looks like the communications staff of HREOC, who I assume are responsible for the blog where unable or unwilling to get their IT people to delegate a subdomain name like blog.humanrights.gov.au and point that to their blog on the other side of the world.

News blog of the Department of Defence

By the Wikipedia definition of blog the News blog of the Department of Defence is a blog, is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. However, like most people I expect a blog to allow the readers to interact, which is not the case here.

Given that it is a specific tool for delivering media releases and related material to a very specific audience, media outlets. Does it need to interact with it’s intended audience? If this website does it’s job, the conversations will be carried out by the media and their audience, not by the News blog of the Department of Defence. The only people likely to interact with this website are people who have an axe to grind with the Department of Defence, so I understand the logic behind not allowing comments.

Is it a blog? I will let you decide, but as a tool to deliver media material to media outlets it does it’s job. Though a RSS feed in addition to email announcement list would be effective way to deliver material to media outlets and other interested parties..

Ripped Off blog

The NSW Office of Fair Trading has created a blog which allows NSW consumers to tell their stories about being ripped off. Their conditions of use and moderation policy are fairly restrictive. To be fair, the Office of Fair Trading needs to protect themselves from somebody naming a business and then making claims that are slanderous.

The blog is a great move, hopefully it will provide the Office of Fair Trading with information about consumer behaviour, particularly those who do not approach the office for assistance. As well as informing and educating consumers about the risks out there and hopefully get more of those who did get ripped off to get real help.

AGIMO consultation blog discussion paper

So the first item I want to highlight is not making use of web 2.0 technology. It is a formal discussion paper about using a blog as a consultation tool, requiring formal written responses. That is the limit of technology, distribute a discussion paper as a PDF and allowing responses by email.

I am just cynical but using a pre-web consultation process on a project that would of been a great test case for a consultation blog, just seems old fashioned and excessively conservative. Has AGIMO not heard of iterative development.