The greatest thing I heard about on re:publica, the German annual blogger´s festival, has got to be MySociety. MySociety is a group of websites from the UK that all aim at getting people involved with local issues and their community. In their own words:

mySociety has two missions. The first is to be a charitable project which builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives. The second is to teach the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to most efficiently use the internet to improve lives.

In oder to achieve that, Tom Steinberg, Francis Irving and Matthew Somerville, the founders of MySociety, have developed sites like FixMyStreet.com and TheyWorkForYou.com.

On FixMyStreet you can report problems in your neighborhood like pot-holes, street light etc. by simply entering your Zip-code and marking the specific area on a map. The report is then sent straight to the council responsible for this area. The site also shows when a reported problem gets fixed. It get´s even better with TheyWorkForYou. On this site you can find all members of parliament (MPs) and all Lords, subscribe to feeds of their activities, browse their last statements, monitor their voting behavior and much more.

I really think this is clever use of the internet and I hope that we get similar sites in Germany and Indonesia soon!