Awards for two ICTA projects
Sri Lanka was feted at the World Summit Award (WSA) gala in Mexico
recently. Over two of Sri Lanka's ICTA-initiated projects won the best
e-Content awards under two different categories. Sri Lanka shone with a
special mark as it was the only developing country to be decked with two
WSA 2009 awards.
|
Chief Operating Officer ICTA, Reshan
Dewapura receives the award |
WSA Chairman Peter A. Bruck said, "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 and
from smaller players. They appear to be much more in touch with users
and their communities. Local content, not global, triumphs in terms of
quality".
The WSA 09 Winners' Gala, WSA Winners' Conference and Exhibition
where Sri Lanka made its mark took place in Monterrey, Mexico recently
(from September 2 to 5). The event in Mexico had been organised in
collaboration with the UN GAID's Global Forum.
The '1919' or the 'GIC' project and the project "Impaired Aid" were
the two Sri Lankan projects that won the prestigious World Summit Award
2009. The World Summit Award (WSA 09) was given to the GIC ('1919')
project which has a single, electronic, trilingual (Sinhala, Tamil and
English) knowledge base of 1,600 services available to citizens from 77
key government organisations.
"The GIC has handled over two million telephone calls in the last two
years during which it has been functioning - averaging over 1,500 calls
a day which goes up to 2,500 calls when we have a media campaign," said
Chief Operating Officer of the Information and Communication Technology
Agency (ICTA) Reshan Dewapura which maintains the Government Information
Centre.
The project '1919' was submitted under ICTA's re-engineering
Government program, "Impaired Aid" was developed by Jinasena Properties
Ltd. under the ICTA's e-Society program the category under which
'Impaired Aid' won the best WSA e-Content award in the world was the
'e-Inclusion and Participation' category.
WSA 2009 had attracted 560 applications under eight categories from
157 countries of which 545 were 'jurable'. There were over 50 entries
under each of the eight categories. There were 20,000 entries which
initially attempted to be selected for the world award. Thus Sri Lanka's
two projects outran about 20,000 projects from 157 countries in being
adjudged the best e-Content project in the world each its own category.
|