National best quality software awards for Sri Lankan ICT products

The awards presentation of the National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA) competition is will be held on October 14 at Water's Edge, Sri Jayawardenapura.

An annual event organised by the British Computer Society Sri Lanka Section (BCSSL), this competition has been conducted since 1998 to showcase and benchmark Sri Lankan ICT products.

The NBQSA 2005 competition aims to give recognition to outstanding achievements of individuals who have and organizations in Sri Lanka that have contributed to the development of ICT. NBQSA also helps to create a window of opportunity to gain international recognition for locally developed ICT products and to improve standards and the quality of local ICT products and services to compete in the international market place.

To further this aim, from 2003 NBQSA has linked up with reputed international awards programmes such as the World Information Technology Summit Awards (WITSA) and the Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA).

APICTA is an association of Asia Pacific ICT trade and professional organizations which have come together with an aim of developing and promoting the ICT industry in the region.

Through an annual awards presentation, it gives recognition to and rewards ICT companies and individuals for their excellence in delivery of products and services. The local representative for APICTA is the Sri Lanka Association for the Software Industry (SLASI).

The NBQSA 2005 competition is divided into three areas namely commercial, tertiary and secondary - encompassing three different levels of ICT usage. The commercial awards category is open to any Sri Lankan organization, group or individuals that has developed ICT products locally.

The tertiary awards category is open to an individual or a group of students from any Sri Lankan university or tertiary eduction institution while the secondary awards category to an individual student or a group of secondary school students.

This year, 32 entries competed for the commercial awards of the NBQSA 2005 competition which covered eight separate categories, while over 150 entries were received for the tertiary and secondary student project categories.

The competition for the commercial categories was conducted by the Sri Lanka section of the BCS, the Tertiary Student Project category by the BCS SL in conjunction with the local Universities and the Secondary Student Project category titled "Young Computer Scientist" was conducted by SLASI.