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.