GIC wins World Summit Award 09
The ICT Agency of Sri Lanka attracts international attention for
creating the world's best e-Content. The multimedia product "Government
Information Centre (GIC)" won the World Summit Award (WSA 09) with a
single, electronic, trilingual (Sinhala, Tamil and English) knowledge
base of 1,600 services available to citizens from 77 key Government
organizations.
With this, the GIC has approximately outrun 20.000 other products and
projects from 157 countries participating in the fourth edition of the
WSA, the United Nations based contest for e-content and creativity in
the Information Society.
The global contest on creativity generated content is taking place
every two years as a follow-on activity to the UN World Summit on
Information Society. This year 545 national finalists from the United
Nations Member States were selected by 34 eminent e-Content experts in
New Delhi.
The submitted projects were nominated in one of the eight WSA
categories to receive global acknowledgement as the world's Best in
e-Content. Australia, Austria, Canada and New Zealand dominate this
year's winners list.
"In contrast to mass TV and newspapers, the new media do not
concentrate in one country or one region; we do not see a digital
Hollywood or digital Fleet street. Rather, the most interesting
e-Contents come from smaller markets. They appear to be much more in
touch with users and their communities. Local content, not global,
triumphs in terms of quality," said WSA Chairman Peter A. Bruck.
The WSA is a global not-for-profit activity promoting the most
outstanding achievements as a flagship partnership initiative of the
UN's Global Alliance for ICT and Development and in close collaboration
with UNESCO, UNIDO, ISOC and a worldwide network of Partners.
"The GIC has handled over two million telephone calls in the last two
years, said Chief Operating Officer of the Information and Communication
Technology Agency (ICTA) Reshan Dewapura.
"The public can call 1919 to access the service run by the GIC which
operates from 8 am till 8 pm and is staffed by officers who can handle
queries in Sinhala, Tamil and English," Director Re-engineering
Government Wasantha Deshapriya said. |